rosieribbons
New Member
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2012
- Messages
- 16
Hi Everybody.
Was wondering if anyone knew how to do the following (apologies if my excel jargon is off, I'm not what you'd call a pro!)
OK so my situation is this. I'm working with a database that holds information on individuals backgrounds. At the moment I'm looking at education history. I have pulled off a list which details what the database currently says each individual has specified as their degree, but they are all worded slightly differently, and I need to introduce some consistency into the wording to allow us to search and sort the data better.
So I've got sheet1, which has a list of all the unique ways a degree is listed within the database, and an adjacent column which specifies what I want to change it to.
And in sheet2 I have a list of serial numbers for the individual records, and adjacent to that, a column detailing the unique degree listings.
So I need to find a way to tell excel "when you find X in column 2 of sheet 2, change it to Y from sheet 1 column 2, but if you don't find X don't do anything. And if you find Z in column 2 of sheet 2, change it to F from sheet 1 column 2, but if you don't find Z don't do anything".....
BUT I have about 2,500 different conditions that I need to apply at the same time.
Does that make sense? and can anyone suggest a way to achieve this? a friend suggested Vlookup but I can't seem to find any evidence that Vlookup can apply such a large volume of conditions simultaneously. Also all the data I'm working with is textual rather than numerical and I can't find much on how to make that work. I have 20,000 records to amend, I really don't want to do them one at a time!
thanks,
Rosie
Was wondering if anyone knew how to do the following (apologies if my excel jargon is off, I'm not what you'd call a pro!)
OK so my situation is this. I'm working with a database that holds information on individuals backgrounds. At the moment I'm looking at education history. I have pulled off a list which details what the database currently says each individual has specified as their degree, but they are all worded slightly differently, and I need to introduce some consistency into the wording to allow us to search and sort the data better.
So I've got sheet1, which has a list of all the unique ways a degree is listed within the database, and an adjacent column which specifies what I want to change it to.
And in sheet2 I have a list of serial numbers for the individual records, and adjacent to that, a column detailing the unique degree listings.
So I need to find a way to tell excel "when you find X in column 2 of sheet 2, change it to Y from sheet 1 column 2, but if you don't find X don't do anything. And if you find Z in column 2 of sheet 2, change it to F from sheet 1 column 2, but if you don't find Z don't do anything".....
BUT I have about 2,500 different conditions that I need to apply at the same time.
Does that make sense? and can anyone suggest a way to achieve this? a friend suggested Vlookup but I can't seem to find any evidence that Vlookup can apply such a large volume of conditions simultaneously. Also all the data I'm working with is textual rather than numerical and I can't find much on how to make that work. I have 20,000 records to amend, I really don't want to do them one at a time!
thanks,
Rosie
