I think a helper column would help you here. If I understand, you want to
exclude anyone who only has negative results, e.g., count of positive
results=0.

If this is the case, add a column and use the following formula: I'll
assume your first john smith appears in cell A2 and extends to row 10000.

=sumproduct(--($A$2:$A$10000=A2),--($C$2:$C$10000="positive"))=0

This would give you a column of TRUEs and FALSEs. You simple filter out the
TRUEs
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"jimbo" wrote:

I have a list of people with test resullts. I need to identify the
infividuals who are positive, and list all of their results, e.g. in
the following example, I would want all of the results of john smith
and mary kay because they have one or more positive results, but not
any of the results of jim jones or susan rae, because all of their
results are negative. This is easy enough when there is a limited
number of individuals, but when it is in the 10s of thousands, it's
impossible for me to capture anything more thatn the positive from a
single date. But I need all of the results of any individual with one
or more positives. Any suggestions?
john smith 3/4/2008 negative
john smith 4/4/2008 positive
john smith 5/4/2008 negative
john smith 6/4/2008 negative
john smith 7/4/2008 negative
jim jones 3/4/2008 negative
jim jones 4/4/2008 negative
jim jones 5/4/2008 negative
jim jones 6/4/2008 negative
jim jones 7/4/2008 negative
mary kay 3/4/2008 negative
mary kay 4/4/2008 negative
mary kay 5/4/2008 negative
mary kay 6/4/2008 positive
mary kay 7/4/2008 negative
mary kay 8/4/2008 negative
susan rae 5/4/2008 negative
susan rae 6/4/2008 negative
susan rae 7/4/2008 negative
susan rae 8/4/2008 negative