Complex search

[Airwolf99]

Hey Team,

I have several large workbooks that I am consolidating into a master workbook. I need to be able to search a few different fields in order to be able to return results. Problem is, that someone coming into this workbook might know the ID number that is in column A, or they might know the part number in column B, or they might know the alternative ID number in column C, etc. To complicate things even more, the part number field in column B can have anywhere from 1 to 15 different part numbers all in one field. The person prior to me just kept annotating part numbers, so for example B1 may have "11111" and B2 may have "22222, 33333, 44444, 55555, 66666, 77777, 88888". I need to have one search field where the user can enter one of those 3 types of numbers, and then filter the results accordingly to return the data.

Thoughts?

 

[DeficientOptimism]

Can we see part of a spreadsheet and a column you would theoretically like to filter on?

 

[offthelip]

Can I suggest that if you are consolidating the workobboks into one master workbook, that you take the opportunity to get the data arranged into a sensible data structure so that you have a only one part number in each cell. In terms of how to do the consolidation the first thing I would do it process the existing data to check for mulitple partnumbers in column B, If they occur, split them up to create multiple rows with duplicate data apart from each row which has a unique part number.
then the search bit should be easy.