What data is in what column?

Col. A Col. B Col. C
200504 Feb 2004 Onsite Tape 1 of 4 200507

Col A = 200504
Col B = Feb 2004 Onsite Tape 1 of 4
Col C = obvious

It looks like all you need to do is find the max for the month year.

Try this entered as an array using the key combination of CTRL,SHIFT,ENTER
(not just ENTER):

=MAX((LEFT(B$2:B$10,8)=LEFT(B2,8))*A$2:A$10)

Copy down as needed. This assumes the "date" format is always mmm yyyy.

Biff

"El Bee" wrote in message
...
Below I have a group of Cells in Columns A & B. They represent backup
tape
numbers and a description. I need to build some kind of a statement that
will tell me the last tape numbe in each set. A set consists of tapes 1
thru
# where # could be 1,2,3 or 4. Some sets have 1 of 2 others have 1,2,3 of
4.
In the first 4 records the last tape in that sequence would be 200507

The formula would go in Col. C and I showed what the results should be
(manually entered)

I have tried using vlookup and building an IF statement but I hit the max
of the If's.
Any ideas would be appreciatied.

here's the data:

Col. A Col. B Col. C
tape # Description Master
200504 Feb 2004 Onsite Tape 1 of 4 200507
200505 Feb 2004 Onsite Tape 2 of 4 200507
200506 Feb 2004 Onsite Tape 3 of 4 200507
200507 Feb 2004 Onsite Tape 4 of 4 200507
200584 Feb 2005 Offsite Tape 1 of 2 200586
200586 Feb 2005 Offsite Tape 2 of 2 200586
200775 Feb 2006 Offstie Tape 1 of 3 200777
200776 Feb 2006 Offstie Tape 2 of 3 200777
200777 Feb 2006 Offstie Tape 3 of 3 200777