"dune" wrote:



"K Dales" wrote:

Response would depend in part on how you want to use this, but what I usually
do is create a formula in another column. Let's say you are looking at cell
B32 and you want to know if there are any other cells in column B that have
the same value. So create a column C and in C32 you would type (as an
example):
=IF(COUNTIF($B:$B,$B32)1,"DUPLICATE","")
This formula could be copied/pasted or autofilled for other rows.

Another way that would show the "sequence number" for the current entry
(i.e. how many times it appears up to that point):
=COUNTIF($B$1:$B32,$B32)

If you truly mean "similar" instead of "exactly equal" that is tougher: how
would you determine what is similar? But here is a variation that counts how
many of the entries start with the same character:
=COUNTIF($B$1:$B32,LEFT($B32,1)&"*")
You could modify this for checking more characters or other types of pattern
matching; see Excel help on that.
--
- K Dales


"dune" wrote:

Is there a formula to find previous similar entries in a column?

Thank you for your help, I tried it but in all cases the answer comes up as
1, it does not show the range of similar data. The idea is that I get the
closest range in the temperature and humidity columns displayed. I do thank
you for your clear explanation and hope you will have another look for me. So
for instance if the temperature today is 20c, and the humidity is 50%, I need
to get a list of similar conditions on previous days and weeks.

The question is this: I take weather and humidity readings in the morning on
the day of an event, (plus a host of other readings) is there a way to type
those readings into excel and search the data-base for a match or near match?
Other readings are also taken and put into excel at the end of the day.