multiple worksheets data

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Multiple worksheets data - delete unwanted data - consolidate da

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Ghilaine has attended:
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Multiple worksheets data - delete unwanted data - consolidate da

Hi all,

I'm in another complicated excel scenario.

I have an existing worksheet (180 rows approx), with some data (client, job position, job id) but am looking to add:
- skills
- recruiter name
- candidate name

I was able to extract a much longer and detailed list on a new worksheet (800 rows approx), with all the data I needed (mentioned above). The problem is that I now have an excess of entries as you can notice by the nb of rows.

I tried using the INDEX/Match function to fill my original worksheet of 180 rows, but the values returned were wrong because the 'job id' (which is the only reference I can use to find the other needed data), was used multiple times in the new worksheet of 800 rows.

I would like to take a step back and:
- delete from the new worksheet all the rows that I don't need, keeping ONLY the ones I had in my original worksheet (180 rows).

Can you please help me with that?

If I manage to do this, then my index/match formula would work well, but now it's all a mess.

If you have a better and smarter suggestion, I'm all ears.

Thanks,
G

RE: Multiple worksheets data - delete unwanted data - consolidat

Hello Ghilaine,

Thank you for your question.

Before deleting any rows, I would suggest that you make a copy of the sheets in case things go wrong.

On the sheet with 800 rows and duplicate IDs, I would recommend the following:

Use 'Remove Duplicates' in the Data tab. You can set this tool to remove duplicates where all the columns / some columns / one column has a match in other rows. When you run the tool to remove duplicates across all columns, this should remove quite a few rows.

Now you can fine tune the removal of remaining duplicate ID rows by running the Duplicates tool again, perhaps on fewer columns, until you have few enough rows left to help you decide more easily which unique rows to keep.

You can also use filtering to narrow down the rows even further and delete redundant rows before running Index and Match.

I hope this helps. Please post again if you need further assistance.

Kind regards
Marius Barnard
STL

RE: Multiple worksheets data - delete unwanted data - consolidat

Hi Marius,

Is this the best way to do it?

Isn't there a way of using a 'consolidate' tool?

I'm not sure it would find all duplicates as most of the rows are not the same, and the additional data in the 800+ rows is just additional data I don't need.

I would like to match my original 180 rows sheet with the 800+ row sheet. i.e. reduce the 800 rows to match the exact same as the 180 rows sheet.

Does that make sense?

Thanks,
G

RE: Multiple worksheets data - delete unwanted data - consolidat

Hi Ghilaine,

Lookup functions in Excel rely on unique matches. To make the ID matches more unique, try concatenating a number of columns into an extra column in each table and use those columns for your lookups instead of just the original IDs.

Perhaps you know that the Concatenate function in Excel joins data from multiple columns into one.

An example is:
=CONCATENATE(B1,B3,B6)

This joins data from columns 1,3 and 6 into one column.

You can concatenate up to 255 columns.

Each record will be much more unique, and hopefully you will find the correct rows more easily.

I hope this helps.

Kind regards
Marius

Thu 15 Jun 2023: Automatically marked as resolved.

 

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