Is ‘overlaying’ rows possible

[Terry436]

For a number of years have been collecting data on family name from very many sources all of which has been entered into excel spreadsheet(s). Of course there are very many entries contains different pieces of date pertaining to the same individual eg

NAME ………..DOB ……….SPOUSE ………Address……..death

1. Fred. 1700. Joan
2. Fred. Joan
3. Fred 1 high st
4. Fred. 1750

Poor formatting in the example, sorry but name-dob-spouse etc are columns Of course there are many more columns but I want to combine the rows into one row containing all the data filling in the blanks and overwriting duplicated values …. Can someone tell me if this is indeed feasible and if so then how

 

[Bosquedeguate]

Will you data always be in the correct order?
Row n = Name,
Row n+1 = DOB
Row n+2 = Spouse's Name
Row n+3 = Address
Row n+4 = DOD

Will you always have 5 entries for each name? and
Are the names in column 1 unique? Does it contain a first and last name? Or could you have multiple Joe Smith's?

There are probably several was to do this? One would be VBA code to run through all your records. The should be correctly sorted by name and grouped in the same order (if possible).

 

[Peter_SSs]

Welcome to the MrExcel board!

Poor formatting in the example, sorry

Have a look at XL2BB for providing sample data.
Perhaps you could provide the sample data again with that?

It would also be good if you could provide the expected result(s) for that sample data so we can be sure just how you want the results to look and where you want them.

Further, does every row in a sheet have the same name in that first column (Fred in your sample)? If not, when providing sample data and expected results, please include data for say 3 different names in the first column.

 

[Terry436]

Thanks both … and I will try to post sample data, in the meantime to answer bisquedeguate’s questions

yes the data will always be in the same order although in the (poor) example I provided there are 5, in actualaity there is probably 30 columns but I figured I could adapt any help I was able to glean.
regrettably the names in column 1 are not unique, however a combination of name + DOB would be.
there are many occurrences of each name and the name is forename and surname in 2 separate columns.
I have it sorted at the moment by forname then surname then dob.
again I really appreciate you taking the time to look at this for me

 

[Terry436]

I just notices you had headings …name … dob … spouses name … etc as rows, they are in fact columns

 

[Peter_SSs]

and I will try to post sample data,

.. don't forget to also provide the expected results, entered manually.