Compare Names with a Macro

Launched: February 2012

Category: Office Automation

Visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igpn5_0VUEo

Often times a task can be handled much easier with a macro.  This video demonstrates just that fact.

I had a client that was needing to compare two columns of names in a spreadsheet.  If a name existed in Column A but did not exist in Column B, then he wanted a record of that fact by placing the name in Column C.  If the name already existed in Column B, then he needed to just skip the name and go to the next name in Column A.

Small and medium sized businesses face these challenges all of the time.  This client had already spent a couple of hours working on a solution before he gave us a call.  Once we had the file and the requirement, we went to work writing a VBA macro in Microsoft Excel.

The macro scans every name in Column A and records it in Column C only if it does not exist in Column B.  My client's actual list of names included about 600 names in Column A and about 2000 names in Column B.  This would be an enormous task to accomplish by hand, but it only took our macro less than a minute to complete the task.

We put together a screencast of the macro in operation.  We changed the names to random words and used a smaller sample size -- only about 50 names in list 1 and 93 names in list 2.

Click here to watch and then contact us with your next automation need.