Do you ever need to compare two lists in Excel, and see if there are some items in one list, that aren’t in the other list? The video below shows how to check for new items, and only add those to your existing list. You don’t want to have a list that’s full of duplicates entries!
Video: Compare Two Excel Lists
In this video’s example, we’ve got a conference attendance list in Excel, with people’s names and email addresses. There’s also a column where Y or N is entered, to show if they’ll attend the event.
Another Excel list has arrived, with most of the same names, but there are a few new people too. We want to keep the main list, and get the new names added.
In this video, you’ll see how to compare two Excel lists, to check if they have any of the same entries. After you find all the new items from List 2, you can quickly add them to the main list.
Video Timeline
- 00:00 Introduction
- 00:15 Two Lists
- 00:45 Excel Table
- 01:30 Find New Records
- 02:42 Add New Records
- 03:30 Get the Sample File
Video: Compare Two Cells in Excel
In the video above, we were only comparing names — it didn’t matter if those names had the same upper and lower case text.
But, if you were checking a list of passwords, you would need check the case, as well as the characters. https://www.contextures.com/excelexactfunctionexamples.html
The video below shows how to use the Excel EXACT function to compare text strings for an exact match, including upper and lower case.
- Note: Examples 4, 5 and 6 show how to find exact matches in a list:
Video Timeline
- 0:00 Introduction
- 1:32 Ex 1: Test Password
- 2:52 Ex 2: Allow Changes to Cell
- 3:37 Ex 3: Force Upper Case Entries
- 4:16 Ex 4: Find Exact Match in List
- 5:19 Ex 5: Pull Name Exact Match in List
- 5:55 Ex 6: Count Exact Matches in List
- 6:13 Ex 7: Check Each Character in Cell
Get the Sample Files
To see the written steps for these video examples, and to get the sample files, you can go to the following pages on my Contextures site.
Compare Two Lists: To get the compare lists sample file, and to see the written steps, go to the Compare Two Excel Lists page. The zipped file is in xlsx format, and does not contain any macros.
Compare Cells: To get the EXACT function sample file, and to see the written steps, go to the Compare Cells with EXACT function page. The zipped file is in xlsx format, and does not contain any macros.
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How to Compare Two Lists in Excel-Find New Items
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