Compare 3 Lists

Learn Excel for MrExcel Podcast, Episode 2006 -- Compare 3 Lists

Hey, check out this artwork with the chalkboard list. I don't think VLOOKUP would ever work on the chalkboard.

Well it's now September, I've been podcasting this entire book through the entire month of August and we're going to  continue in September. Go ahead subscribe to the playlist, top right hand corner.

Hey welcome back to the MrExcel netcast I'm Bill Jelen. We have three lists today. Must be some sort of a party were throwing or maybe a staff meeting. Here's the RSVPs on Monday. Here's the list on Tuesday. Alright so some people are still there Mark Rosenkrantz is there, but some other people have been added and who knows maybe some people have been dropped. It sounds like it's a horrible bunch of VLOOKUPS and not just two VLOOKUPS, three, four. At least four VLOOKUP matches in there, but hey, let's forget about VLOOKUP.

There's an awesome way to do this. That's really, really easy. I'm going to  go to the first list and I'm going to add a column called source. Where did this come from? This came from list 1 or in this case, Monday, came from the Monday list and I'm going to  take all of the Tuesday data, copy that data, go down to the below list 1 and we will call all this, say that all these records came from Tuesday. And then I'm going to take the Wednesday data, copy that, CTRL C, down to the bottom of the list CTRL V and we'll call it all Wednesday, like this, alright? Then that list, that Superset of all the other lists, and by the way, if I had 4 or 5, 6 lists, I just keep copying them to the bottom. Insert. PivotTable. I'll put it in an existing worksheet. Right here. Okay two click. Okay 5 click okay. Down the left hand side, the name, across the top, Source? and then, whatever we're trying to measure, in this case the number of RSVPs.

Alright, a couple things, let's again Design tab, Report layout, Show in Tabular Form, get real headings up there. We don't need a Grand Total that makes no sense. Right click, remove Grand Total. Alright, we now have a superset of anyone who was in any of the lists. Right, so here Carl had RSVP'd on Monday, but by Tuesday he decided he wasn't coming. So we can see whether we are up or down. Right, this is so much easier than the VLOOKUP method. In fact, if you want to see the VLOOKUP method, wait till after the credits in this video and I'll show you the quick way or a quick look at doing that, but this is the method that's in the book.

Go ahead and buy the book. It's cheap, right? MrExcel XL, 40 greatest excel tips of all time. 25 bucks in print. 10 bucks as an e-book. It has all the information from the August podcast and now the September podcast.

Alright, so you have three lists to compare. Time for lots of VLOOKUP? No, far easier way. Add a source column to the first list and say that those records came from list 1. Copy list 2, beneath list 1. Change the source to say came from list 2. Copy the list 3 to the bottom of both lists. If you have more or less keep going. Create a PivotTable. Source in the columns area; that's the most important part. Remove the Grand Total column and you have a Superset of items appearing in any list and their answer from each list.

Okay, I want to thank you for stopping by, we'll see you next time for another netcast from MrExcel.