Is There A Method Or Software By Which To Locate New Entries In 2nd Excel Worksheet

[Internet Highway Traveler]

Hello,

I obtain, every other day, a single Excel Worksheet, usually having close to
25,000 cells of data.

Two days later, I acquire another worksheet, which contains almost all of
the previous sheet's data.

The difference between the two is that the second sheet will include cells
that did not appear anywhere in the first one.

Further, the inclusion of the cells in the second sheet will be at random
locations. In other words, if there are 10 new cells, they will not appear
immediately one after the other.

The new cells never appear either at the very top or bottom of the
worksheet; if they did, they would be very easy to identify.

Is there a way using Excel, Open Office (which I have never used) or another
software that will identify and/or export the cells in the second sheet that
did not appear in the first one?

Additionally, though slightly less important, is there any means by which to
identify those cells in the first sheet that do not appear in the second?

Thanks.

 

[Dave Peterson]

There are a few ways I know to compare values in two worksheets, but I'm not
sure if any would work for you.

#1. There are ways to compare two worksheets (cell by cell--A1 with A1, X99
with X99, ...).
Look at Myrna Larson and Bill Manville's compare program:
http://www.cpearson.com/excel/whatsnew.htm
look for compare.xla

But that doesn't sound like it would work for you.

#2. There are ways to compare two worksheets when each row/record has a unique
key. You could use =index(match()) or =vlookup() or a macro that does this for
you.

But you haven't shared enough to know if this would work (what column is the key
(in each worksheet), what columns need to be compared).

#3. There are programs that do text comparisons between plain old text files.
MSWord is one of those programs.

You could save the files as text files (.csv or .txt or .prn???) and then use
MSWord to compare the two text files.

This may work for you. It shouldn't be too difficult/time consuming to test.