The short answer to your question is that this is a perfect example of why
Excel shouldn't be used as a database--it's too easy to corrupt data and lead
to inquiries like that.

The long, and awkward, answer to your question:
1) you can sort by SurnameForename and then do a visual inspection.

2) You can do a pivot table in which you Sort by SurnameForename and then
PatientID. Assuming no two different patients have the same name (doubtful,
given your patient population size) you can identify unique patients who have
multiple PatientIDs.

Perhaps someone can come up with a more elegant solution, but a proper
database, such as Access, really is your best bet here. If this is for a
business, you may want to invest in a database consultant to design a
patient-records system for you.

Dave
--
Brevity is the soul of wit.


"richardwo" wrote:

Hello,

I am working on an Excel database which is used to record patients who
accessed a service. There are 12,000+ rows in the database.

The database is designed in a such a way that patients have a seperate
record (row) for each month that they used the service. Each patients has a
unique PatientID number, however, many patients have more than one number and
I want to identify these patients, but do not know how and would apprecaite
your help in doing this.

The datbase is in the following format:

Month PatientID SurnameForename D.O.B Address etc......
Jun05 15678 BloggsJoe 23/4/07 Any Street
Apr05 15745 AnyOne 15/8/90 Whereever
Jan05 15896 BloggsJoe 23/4/07 Any Street

As you can see from the above example Joe Bloggs has two entries, one for
June and one for January but they have different PatientIDs (which they
should not). I would like to filter the 12,000 records or run a pivot to
identify patients which have multiple PatientIDs. Is there anyway that I can
do this?

Thank you in advance, Richard