Maddening Dilemma - Compare each cell within column a to each cell in column b and find unique matches

I have been trying to find a way in which i can have excel search
through two columns to find each unique match between the columns and
somehow change the formatting (like highlighting) to fish out the
matches. The problem is that i cannot think of a way to get each cell
in column a compared to each cell in column b, rinse and repeat for
the entire column a. And i am talking about thousands of rows per
column, and the columns are not necessarily the same size. Maddening!

If anyone has any ideas that do not involve installing shareware
plugins, please let me know!

Thanks!

use countif as the formula is part of Conditional Formatting

=countif(C:C,A2)

information on conditional formattiong

Debra Dalgleish
http://www.contextures.com/tiptech.html


Chip Pearson's site on duplicates and uniques
http://www.cpearson.com/Excel/Duplicates.aspx

--
Regards,
Tom Ogilvy



" wrote:

I have been trying to find a way in which i can have excel search
through two columns to find each unique match between the columns and
somehow change the formatting (like highlighting) to fish out the
matches. The problem is that i cannot think of a way to get each cell
in column a compared to each cell in column b, rinse and repeat for
the entire column a. And i am talking about thousands of rows per
column, and the columns are not necessarily the same size. Maddening!

If anyone has any ideas that do not involve installing shareware
plugins, please let me know!

Thanks!

Tom,
A great start upon a solution, i am attempting a workaround using the
info you provided, many thanks!

Although my problem is more intricate than i let on. Realistically, i
would like to find duplicate values within the same column, but some
of the values are negative and some ar positive. I need to find out,
and highlight, the values which would cancel each other out. Hence i
need to find duplicates, except that they are not EXACT duplicates,
but one is the positive version of the number and one is the negative
version of the number. Here is an small example of such a list:

A1
10 -matches such as this and the negative 10 below it both need to
be highlighted
-10
11
12
13 -does not cancel and doesnt need to be highlighted
-12
-11
15
-15
-15 -also does not cancel since one positve already canceled with one
negative and doesnt need to be highlighted

as you can see, i am attempting to highlight the corresponding
positive and negative values (the ones which would cancel each other
out) and leave the singular values unhighlighted. The problem is
even futher complicated by the fact that some values might have
multiple duplicates. There may be 10 positive number 11's and
nineteen negative number 11's, meaning i need the 10 positive versions
of the number 11 to cancel and highlight along with the 10 negative
versions of the number 11, but to leave the other 9 number 11's
unhighlighted.

I apologize for how confusing this sounds, but i would choose
confusing over hours of manual labor infused with human error anyday,
seeing as how i have thousands of rows within this one column with
many random and changing values to identify and compare.

If you or anyone can think of a solution more closely tailored to this
particular situation, i would be indebted to you forever.

In the meantime, i will work with what you provided to me Tom.

Thank you kindly.

One play which can deliver both the CF desired and a way to extract the
cells in col A which do not cancel out ..

Assuming source numbers within A1:A100, as posted

Put in B1:
=IF(A1="","",COUNTIF($A$1:A1,A1))

Put in C1, then array-enter the formula by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER
(instead of just pressing ENTER):
=IF(B1="","",IF(ISNUMBER(MATCH(-A1&"_"&B1,$A$1:$A$100&"_"&$B$1:$B$100,0)),"",ROW() ))
Select B1:C1, copy down to C100. Col C will "flag" only cells in col A which
do not cancel out.

Then you could easily apply CF to highlight col A pointing to col C
Select col A (A1 active), then apply CF using Formula Is:
=$C1""
Format the fill color to taste, OK out

And if you want to extract those cells in col A which do not cancel out in
another col (this might be useful), just put in say E1:
=IF(ROW()COUNT(C:C),"",INDEX(A:A,SMALL(C:C,ROW()) ))
Copy down to E100. This will return all cells in col A which do not cancel
out, neatly bunched at the top in col E
--
Max
Singapore
http://savefile.com/projects/236895
xdemechanik
---
wrote in message
ps.com...
Tom,
A great start upon a solution, i am attempting a workaround using the
info you provided, many thanks!

Although my problem is more intricate than i let on. Realistically, i
would like to find duplicate values within the same column, but some
of the values are negative and some ar positive. I need to find out,
and highlight, the values which would cancel each other out. Hence i
need to find duplicates, except that they are not EXACT duplicates,
but one is the positive version of the number and one is the negative
version of the number. Here is an small example of such a list:

A1
10 -matches such as this and the negative 10 below it both need to
be highlighted
-10
11
12
13 -does not cancel and doesnt need to be highlighted
-12
-11
15
-15
-15 -also does not cancel since one positve already canceled with one
negative and doesnt need to be highlighted

as you can see, i am attempting to highlight the corresponding
positive and negative values (the ones which would cancel each other
out) and leave the singular values unhighlighted. The problem is
even futher complicated by the fact that some values might have
multiple duplicates. There may be 10 positive number 11's and
nineteen negative number 11's, meaning i need the 10 positive versions
of the number 11 to cancel and highlight along with the 10 negative
versions of the number 11, but to leave the other 9 number 11's
unhighlighted.

I apologize for how confusing this sounds, but i would choose
confusing over hours of manual labor infused with human error anyday,
seeing as how i have thousands of rows within this one column with
many random and changing values to identify and compare.

If you or anyone can think of a solution more closely tailored to this
particular situation, i would be indebted to you forever.

In the meantime, i will work with what you provided to me Tom.

Thank you kindly.

Mr.Max,
Pl see my response to this question. I shall be grateful for your comments
/ suggestions.


"Max" wrote:

One play which can deliver both the CF desired and a way to extract the
cells in col A which do not cancel out ..

Assuming source numbers within A1:A100, as posted

Put in B1:
=IF(A1="","",COUNTIF($A$1:A1,A1))

Put in C1, then array-enter the formula by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER
(instead of just pressing ENTER):
=IF(B1="","",IF(ISNUMBER(MATCH(-A1&"_"&B1,$A$1:$A$100&"_"&$B$1:$B$100,0)),"",ROW() ))
Select B1:C1, copy down to C100. Col C will "flag" only cells in col A which
do not cancel out.

Then you could easily apply CF to highlight col A pointing to col C
Select col A (A1 active), then apply CF using Formula Is:
=$C1""
Format the fill color to taste, OK out

And if you want to extract those cells in col A which do not cancel out in
another col (this might be useful), just put in say E1:
=IF(ROW()COUNT(C:C),"",INDEX(A:A,SMALL(C:C,ROW()) ))
Copy down to E100. This will return all cells in col A which do not cancel
out, neatly bunched at the top in col E
--
Max
Singapore
http://savefile.com/projects/236895
xdemechanik
---
wrote in message
ps.com...
Tom,
A great start upon a solution, i am attempting a workaround using the
info you provided, many thanks!

Although my problem is more intricate than i let on. Realistically, i
would like to find duplicate values within the same column, but some
of the values are negative and some ar positive. I need to find out,
and highlight, the values which would cancel each other out. Hence i
need to find duplicates, except that they are not EXACT duplicates,
but one is the positive version of the number and one is the negative
version of the number. Here is an small example of such a list:

A1
10 -matches such as this and the negative 10 below it both need to
be highlighted
-10
11
12
13 -does not cancel and doesnt need to be highlighted
-12
-11
15
-15
-15 -also does not cancel since one positve already canceled with one
negative and doesnt need to be highlighted

as you can see, i am attempting to highlight the corresponding
positive and negative values (the ones which would cancel each other
out) and leave the singular values unhighlighted. The problem is
even futher complicated by the fact that some values might have
multiple duplicates. There may be 10 positive number 11's and
nineteen negative number 11's, meaning i need the 10 positive versions
of the number 11 to cancel and highlight along with the 10 negative
versions of the number 11, but to leave the other 9 number 11's
unhighlighted.

I apologize for how confusing this sounds, but i would choose
confusing over hours of manual labor infused with human error anyday,
seeing as how i have thousands of rows within this one column with
many random and changing values to identify and compare.

If you or anyone can think of a solution more closely tailored to this
particular situation, i would be indebted to you forever.

In the meantime, i will work with what you provided to me Tom.

Thank you kindly.

Balan,

Thanks so much for taking the time to write a script for this
dilemma. In my attempts to execute the VBA macro script in excel, i
recieved a compile erorr: syntax error which caused the macro not to
run. The error occured at this point:

Application.Goto
Reference:=Worksheets("Sheet1").Cells(rownum,
colnum)

Beneath the first DoWhile Loop.

I am not much a programmer and so am not sure as to why this
happened.

Max,
thank you for your valiant effort on this problem of mine.

To comment on the solution you provided, i used your formulas and used
conditional formatting but received results that were not accurate.
Maybe if i emailed you the actual data set i am working with and
showed to you how your formatting worked out, it would be easier.

In the meantime, what happened was that in column B was that numbers
ranging from 1 to 16 showed up in various places. What did you mean
for this column to do? It had 1's next to values which i knew
repeated in the negative, so i dont think that count was accurate.

With column C, it basically counted each row position in order except
for about 10 or 15 rows in the middle of my long dataset in column
A.

As for the conditional formatting, since column C did not work out
exactly how i think you had anticipated, the formatting was also off.
Although the formatting did what it was supposed to do, just that
column C seemed to be of little use in this case.

I will email you the dataset so that you can see for yourself, the
results i achieved with your formulas.

What exactly did you mean for columns B and C to do? I am not the best
with understanding the code in excel.

THank you again for all of your help in this matter.

Here's a working sample to illustrate:
http://cjoint.com/?kbafj66Yrv
NettOffPosnNeg.xls

Note that the CF suggested earlier
is to highlight cells is col A which *do not* cancel out.

If you want to CF it the other way round,
use the converse formula: =$C1=""

The formulas in col B and C need to be implemented correctly. They need to
be copied all the way down to the last row of data in source col A.

My suggestion as applied to your sample is available he
http://www.flypicture.com/download/MzcyODY=
Madenning_Dilemma2_1.xls
--
Max
Singapore
http://savefile.com/projects/236895
xdemechanik
---
wrote in message
ups.com...
Max,
thank you for your valiant effort on this problem of mine.

To comment on the solution you provided, i used your formulas and used
conditional formatting but received results that were not accurate.
Maybe if i emailed you the actual data set i am working with and
showed to you how your formatting worked out, it would be easier.

In the meantime, what happened was that in column B was that numbers
ranging from 1 to 16 showed up in various places. What did you mean
for this column to do? It had 1's next to values which i knew
repeated in the negative, so i dont think that count was accurate.

With column C, it basically counted each row position in order except
for about 10 or 15 rows in the middle of my long dataset in column
A.

As for the conditional formatting, since column C did not work out
exactly how i think you had anticipated, the formatting was also off.
Although the formatting did what it was supposed to do, just that
column C seemed to be of little use in this case.

I will email you the dataset so that you can see for yourself, the
results i achieved with your formulas.

What exactly did you mean for columns B and C to do? I am not the best
with understanding the code in excel.

THank you again for all of your help in this matter.

Some explanations:

Col B serves to assign an arbitrary unique "suffix" to the data in col A.
This suffix assignment is necessary to distinguish between all multiple
occurences of the source numbers which you have in col A. Eg there could be
multiple occurences of 10, -10, 11, -11, etc all the way down in col A.

Col C then checks for the match of the original source numbers in col A
concatenated with the corresponding suffixes in col B against the full table
array composed. Where it matches (ie cancels out), the expression returns a
null string. Where it doesn't match, it returns an arbitrary row number as a
flag. This flag can then be used in the CF formula to format col A for all
the non-cancellations, ie all the unique source numbers in col A which do
not cancel out

The flag could also be used as well in another col E, to "float up" all the
non-cancellations from col A.

Easiest to see what's happening by referring
to this small working sample (as posted earlier):
http://cjoint.com/?kbafj66Yrv
NettOffPosnNeg.xls

--
Max
Singapore
http://savefile.com/projects/236895
xdemechanik
---

Let's suppose your column that contains the values indicated is a
named range called MyRange. The following multi-cell array formula
will return a unique occurence of each uncancelled item:

=INDEX(IF(MyRange0,ABS(MyRange)*(COUNTIF(MyRange, "="&MyRange)-
COUNTIF(MyRange,"="&-MyRange)),
0),SMALL(IF(MATCH(IF(MyRange0,ABS(MyRange)*(COUNT IF(MyRange,"="&MyRange)-
COUNTIF(MyRange,"="&-MyRange)),
0),IF(MyRange0,ABS(MyRange)*(COUNTIF(MyRange,"="& MyRange)-
COUNTIF(MyRange,"="&-MyRange)),0),
0)=ROW(INDIRECT("1:"&ROWS(IF(MyRange0,ABS(MyRange )*(COUNTIF(MyRange,"="&MyRange)-
COUNTIF(MyRange,"="&-MyRange)),
0)))),MATCH(IF(MyRange0,ABS(MyRange)*(COUNTIF(MyR ange,"="&MyRange)-
COUNTIF(MyRange,"="&-MyRange)),
0),IF(MyRange0,ABS(MyRange)*(COUNTIF(MyRange,"="& MyRange)-
COUNTIF(MyRange,"="&-MyRange)),0),
0),""),ROW(INDIRECT("1:"&ROWS(IF(MyRange0,ABS(MyR ange)*(COUNTIF(MyRange,"="&MyRange)-
COUNTIF(MyRange,"="&-MyRange)),0))))))

If there's an extra negative, it will return the negative, and if
there's an extra positive, it will return the positive. One zero will
be returned for all matching pairs. It will return #NUM error if your
array range is longer than the list. So, in this set:

10
-10
-10
11
-11
12
13
14
-14
15
-15
-15
16
16
-16


The result is this, assuming you array-entered the above formula in an
8-row range:

-10
0
12
13
-15
16
#NUM!
#NUM!


Hope this helps.
-Ilia



On Sep 28, 4:24 pm, wrote:
Tom,
A great start upon a solution, i am attempting a workaround using the
info you provided, many thanks!

Although my problem is more intricate than i let on. Realistically, i
would like to find duplicate values within the same column, but some
of the values are negative and some ar positive. I need to find out,
and highlight, the values which would cancel each other out. Hence i
need to find duplicates, except that they are not EXACT duplicates,
but one is the positive version of the number and one is the negative
version of the number. Here is an small example of such a list:

A1
10 -matches such as this and the negative 10 below it both need to
be highlighted
-10
11
12
13 -does not cancel and doesnt need to be highlighted
-12
-11
15
-15
-15 -also does not cancel since one positve already canceled with one
negative and doesnt need to be highlighted

as you can see, i am attempting to highlight the corresponding
positive and negative values (the ones which would cancel each other
out) and leave the singular values unhighlighted. The problem is
even futher complicated by the fact that some values might have
multiple duplicates. There may be 10 positive number 11's and
nineteen negative number 11's, meaning i need the 10 positive versions
of the number 11 to cancel and highlight along with the 10 negative
versions of the number 11, but to leave the other 9 number 11's
unhighlighted.

I apologize for how confusing this sounds, but i would choose
confusing over hours of manual labor infused with human error anyday,
seeing as how i have thousands of rows within this one column with
many random and changing values to identify and compare.

If you or anyone can think of a solution more closely tailored to this
particular situation, i would be indebted to you forever.

In the meantime, i will work with what you provided to me Tom.

Thank you kindly.