okay: the entries in my data set can have anywhere between 17 and 27
characters.
The entries are broken into character strings by the underscore character.
Two groups of character strings are important: those that identify the entry
as belonging to a particular subgroup and those that then determine whether
within that subgroup that entry is unique.

Each subgroup where we determine if one entry is different from another is
identified by the characters in positions 7 through 12 or 7 through 14. The
subgroup that determines whether an entry is unique within that subgroup is
either the last character or starts 8 to 9 characters from the right.

Here's another example:
(1) CMMI2_MA_SP2_04_P_ND_PP_H
(2) CMMI2_PMC_GP2_01_G
(3) CMMI2_PPQA_GP2_01_P
(4) CMMI2_PPQA_GP2_01_P_PD_PP_H

In this example there are three subgroups: line 1; line 2; line 3 & 4 each
represent unique subgroups. Because lines 1 & 2 only have one entry in their
respective subgroups, they are both unique. The last 8 characters of line 4
(and really line 1) are always superfluous. Therefore, to determine if
entries 3 & 4 are duplicates we move past those characters and look at the
last character in line 3 and what would be the last character in line 4 if
the group of 8 €œextra€� characters were removed from line 4. When viewed in
that way, we see that these entries are duplicates and we only need to keep
one entry (doesnt matter which). We now have three unique entries to move to
our new column:
(1) CMMI2_MA_SP2_04_P_ND_PP_H
(2) CMMI2_PMC_GP2_01_G
(3) CMMI2_PPQA_GP2_01_P

I want to copy the unique set to a new column, not move. I need to keep the
original set of data.

"Otto Moehrbach" wrote:

You say the second set of characters can have different lengths. What about
the first set, the set of 17 characters in your example?
Also, you say you want the unique entries "moved". Not copied but moved?
Otto
"K. Gwynn" wrote in message
...
Yes, I am interested in only finding the entries that are unique. But its
not
always the same number of characters. The second set of characters is
sometimes as many as four characters long. The stuff at the end could be
as
short as 3 characters or as long as 5 extra characters.
Once identified, I need to have the unique entries moved to another column
so I can work just with them.

"Otto Moehrbach" wrote:

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but it appears that you are not interested
in
finding duplicate entries, but only those entries that are duplicate for
the
first specific number of characters. In your examples that's 17
characters.
In other words, not counting what you refer to as the extension. Is that
right?
You would need VBA for that but you don't say what you want done with
entries that are found to be duplicates (for the first 17 characters).
Do
you want duplicates highlighted? Moved? Copied? All the entries that
are
duplicates or do you want to leave one? HTH Otto
"K. Gwynn" wrote in message
...
Before posting this message I read through all the posts for finding
and
counting unique entries and tried most of the responses and still have
not
found a solution that works for my situation.

So here goes:

I have a spreadsheet with 700+ entries. The records I need to sort on
look
like this:
CMMI2_CM_GP2_08_G
CMMI2_CM_GP2_09_P
CMMI2_CM_GP2_09_P
CMMI2_CM_GP2_09_P_PD_PP_H
CMMI2_CM_GP2_10_P_ND_PP_H

In the example above the duplicates are
CMMI2_CM_GP2_09_P
CMMI2_CM_GP2_09_P
CMMI2_CM_GP2_09_P_PD_PP_H

So when I've tried using Advanced Filter, the two that look exactly the
same
are filtered out, but the one with the "PD_PP_H" extension is not.

[No, that extension cannot be filtered out ahead of time and yes, it is
important to the data set].

Now what? Thanks in advance for any suggestions and help.