James asks if it is possible to compare two worksheets from the same workbook side by side. Today, in Episode #1342, Bill shows us a low-tech way to do this comparison. Tune in to The Learn Excel from MrExcel Podcast for Part 2, airing tomorrow.
Transcript of the video:
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Learn Excel from MrExcel podcast episode 1342: Compare Worksheets.
Hey welcome back to the MrExcel netcast I'm Bill Jelen.
Today's question sent in by James.
James has two different worksheets here; he has the United States and Denmark.
He would like to compare all of these values side by side and I'm going to show a harder way to do this tomorrow but you know, first I scaned down through these and I actually used a little match formula and the things are in exactly the same order.
So that makes me wonder is there just a real low-tech solution to this?
I'm going to go to Denmark first and from Denmark come up here to View, New Window.
If you're back in Excel 2003 that's Window, New Window.
All right and now you'll see that I'm looking at the colon 2 version right up here in the title bar.
So I'll go to United States.
So Denmark was colon 1, United States colon 2 and now we're going to do compare side-by-side or review side-by-side it.
Again View tab in 2007 or 2010; Window menu back in Excel 2003 and what that's going to do is going to require a little bit of finagling here but it's going to give us both worksheets side-by-side so you see on the left hand side I have the United States.
Let's get it so we can see the first couple of columns maybe and then over here on the right hand side we'll have Denmark, a little smaller--.
The beautiful thing about views side by side and this came along in Excel 2003, is as I scroll on the right hand side look, the left hand side is scrolling as well, all right, that's almost perfect.
So let's adjust this a little bit here, maybe make column A real narrow so that way we can at least see our 2001 data and then let's scroll this over so I can see 2001.
So now on the right hand side I'm looking at Denmark and on the left hand side I'm looking at United States and I can scroll through item by item.
Actually probably need to see—there we go.
There's some merged cells in the spreadsheet.
Merged cells are completely evil.
All right, look at that.
Let's just get rid of these merged cells.
Choose all cells, Ctrl+1 and go to alignment, merge cells uncheck.
Same thing over here choose all cells, Ctrl+1 and turn off merge cells.
Now let's see if we can't get this the way we want it to.
On the left-hand side I want to see column B or even do a View, freeze panes.
On the right hand side there's my 2001 and as I scroll down I should be able to watch that stay the same.
We will do the exact same freeze panes here but here I'm going to do it in column D because I don't need to see the information on the left.
That's funny I started this podcast out saying this would be the easy way to go; not positive that I'm actually there.
So United States on the left then Denmark on the right and it's scrolling back and forth and also up and down in sync.
A very cool way without any formulas at all once you know that the data is in the same sequence.
Well hey I want to thank you for stopping by.
We’ll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
Learn Excel from MrExcel podcast episode 1342: Compare Worksheets.
Hey welcome back to the MrExcel netcast I'm Bill Jelen.
Today's question sent in by James.
James has two different worksheets here; he has the United States and Denmark.
He would like to compare all of these values side by side and I'm going to show a harder way to do this tomorrow but you know, first I scaned down through these and I actually used a little match formula and the things are in exactly the same order.
So that makes me wonder is there just a real low-tech solution to this?
I'm going to go to Denmark first and from Denmark come up here to View, New Window.
If you're back in Excel 2003 that's Window, New Window.
All right and now you'll see that I'm looking at the colon 2 version right up here in the title bar.
So I'll go to United States.
So Denmark was colon 1, United States colon 2 and now we're going to do compare side-by-side or review side-by-side it.
Again View tab in 2007 or 2010; Window menu back in Excel 2003 and what that's going to do is going to require a little bit of finagling here but it's going to give us both worksheets side-by-side so you see on the left hand side I have the United States.
Let's get it so we can see the first couple of columns maybe and then over here on the right hand side we'll have Denmark, a little smaller--.
The beautiful thing about views side by side and this came along in Excel 2003, is as I scroll on the right hand side look, the left hand side is scrolling as well, all right, that's almost perfect.
So let's adjust this a little bit here, maybe make column A real narrow so that way we can at least see our 2001 data and then let's scroll this over so I can see 2001.
So now on the right hand side I'm looking at Denmark and on the left hand side I'm looking at United States and I can scroll through item by item.
Actually probably need to see—there we go.
There's some merged cells in the spreadsheet.
Merged cells are completely evil.
All right, look at that.
Let's just get rid of these merged cells.
Choose all cells, Ctrl+1 and go to alignment, merge cells uncheck.
Same thing over here choose all cells, Ctrl+1 and turn off merge cells.
Now let's see if we can't get this the way we want it to.
On the left-hand side I want to see column B or even do a View, freeze panes.
On the right hand side there's my 2001 and as I scroll down I should be able to watch that stay the same.
We will do the exact same freeze panes here but here I'm going to do it in column D because I don't need to see the information on the left.
That's funny I started this podcast out saying this would be the easy way to go; not positive that I'm actually there.
So United States on the left then Denmark on the right and it's scrolling back and forth and also up and down in sync.
A very cool way without any formulas at all once you know that the data is in the same sequence.
Well hey I want to thank you for stopping by.
We’ll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.
