noko

Try stack overflow? /biz/, /sci/?

>>18716013
it would be helpful to see the exact data format

so far it sounds it sounds like sheet A has just one single column and every cell contains 4 values separated by semicolons

if that is indeed the case you should split the one quadruple column of sheet A into 4 columns

then merge all A sheets

then, in the merged sheet, paste the B sheet not below, but "to the right" of what's already there

then sort the rows by ID (ascending or descending. Excel can definitely do this with numbers. I just hope the IDs are all in the same format [zeroes in front or not etc])

then youd just have to make a formula that puts the content of the "name column" on the right into the "name column" on the left for every row. because of the sorting by ID, the matching "name columns" will already be in the same row

hope that helped

>>18716013
Your in good luck lad. Fortunately, the task you are describing is fairly simple to implement using macros. This can bring the task down to seconds, which is probably very desirable to you. I can give you some code to get you started (obviously remove the greater than sign from these. Also note that the ' before a line I'm Visual Basic for Excel indicates the line is a comment):
>Dim varWorkbookA
>Dim varWorkbookB
>Dim varWorkbookAPath
>Dim varWorkbookBPath
>
>varWorkbookA = ActiveWorkbook.Name
>
>varWorkbookBPath = "C:\Path_of_workbook_b"
>
>Workbooks.open varWorkbookBPath
>
>varWorkbookB = ActiveWorkbook.Name
>
>'do a for or while loop
>Workbooks(varWorkbookA).Activate
>'Google code for ctrl f function
>Workbooks(varWorkbookA).Activate
>Range ("A1").PasteSpecial

You'll be best off going to /g/ with this one. It's trivial if you know excel VBA, but if you don't know it, it's a pain to implement

>>18716013
put all the data in one sheet and use an index function with search and replace functions to do it all at once. Bonus points for setting it up to swap data sets in and out.

if you don't know how index functions work then learn those first.

>>18716024
Tried stack overflow to limited avail

>>18716041

Cheers for the breakdown- Unfortunately sheet A contains about 5 columns of data. You were right about the unknown column however, this is essentially 4 values separated by semicolons. There's limited deviation in how they're expressed, but some IDs can look slightly different (can start with SE, or US) followed by the code to express the country domain. I think one key point I have to hammer home is that I cannot realistically merge all of this data into one manipulable spreadsheet.

>>18716054
Thanks for this man, i'll certainly throw it over to /g/. A macro is what I was thinking alright. The only issue I have with this is how a macro might handle an instance where spreadsheet B does not recognize an ID copied for spreadsheet A (this happens on occasion, the ID needs to be requested and is then copied down onto the master spreadsheet B). Would the macro fall over or would it simply ignore the mismatched values- as this could causes issues and rework? I'm a bit of a macro newbie, so some of this goes slightly over my head.

>>18716140
A macro can capture everything. You can create If statements to handle cases where an ID is not found. A possible solution is that for all id's missed, the macro goes to a different tab and creates a running column with the misses. These can then be analyzed by hand, and any patterns found in them can be incorporated into the macro.

Some additional advice, you can sometimes use the Macro Recorder on the developer tab (a hidden tab in Excel) to follow your actions, and then chain these recordings together to build a macro. For example, turn on the recorder, flip to a different workbook, and then flip back to the original workbook, and stop the recording. You should now have some basic code to flip between workbooks. You can keep doing this and possibly make the program you are looking for, or at least help make it a bit