Need help combining 2 worksheets...

[kdiala]

I am new to this forum, but hoping that I could find some help here.

This is going to start out really general, but I have 2 excel worksheets - one with a master list of all account submissions (5000) and one with submissions that resulted in a loan (2800). While they will (*should*) have the account name the same, the master list is very general and the loan worksheet will have detailed information like id#, loan#, payment history, etc. Is there some way to combine the two? I don't think that I can combine and then sort by name, because we have multiple submissions for some customers - and I am stuck trying to sort out this mess of 5000+ entries. I am not sure if excel is the best way to try and sort this out, or if building some sort of access database would be better??

Any ideas? Thanks!!

 

[BrianB]

Hopefully my code here will help you on your way.

You will have problems if there are duplicate account/value entries when it will be necessary to mark the "found" values to be able to discard them later - and continue the search.

The way I see it, you need to :-
1. find the master list account name in the loan list
2. If match found..
2a. check that the loan amount matches (if there is a check mark, continue the search)
2b. if no check mark transfer data to new columns in the master list. Mark Loan record as "found".

Experience tells me that your biggest problem will be that the account names will be spelled differently so Find will not work. Even (extra) spaces in the wrong place will mess things up.

To overcome this it may help to make a new search column in the master list to contain part of the account name. Again, experience tells me that this will be a gradual process of elimination until all the loan records are matched using a variety of methods - including sorting and viewing physically one by one.

BASIC SEARCH
http://www.mrexcel.com/board2/viewtopic.php?t=149439&highlight=

CONTINUE SEARCH FINDING MULTIPLE MATCHES
http://www.mrexcel.com/board2/viewtopic.php?t=148345&highlight=

I do not see any benefit from using MS Access.