Thanks Bernie,

VB is not my specialty - I have some background in fixing existing code and
working with this forum to modify code provided by MVPs... I always
appreciate the help and only use it in instances where I am profoundly
stumped.

If anyone is reading this and has any idea how I would implement this I
would be very, very appreciative. This is something I need to do one way or
the other over the next week and would prefer not to spend 24 hours a day
doing it manually. :-P

If anyone can give me some clues on the coding of this idea...... I'll buy
you some champagne or something. heheh

thanks!!!!!
- S

"Bernie Deitrick" wrote:

Bob,

The general approach would be to use a macro that loops through the
workbooks, reads the column heading and sees if it currently exists in the
combined sheet: if it does, it adds the data at the bottom of the existiung
column, if it doesn't it adds a new column with a new header and then adds
the data into the sames rows as for existing items.

The coding shouldn't be too hard - but I have to go right now, so I can't do
it for you. But maybe that will give you a clue to get started.

HTH,
Bernie
MS Excel MVP


"Bob Dobalina" wrote in message
...
Hello group,

I have about 300 workbooks with just one sheet each (Sheet1). Each
worksheet
has about 130 columns and anywhere from 20 to 2000 rows. I need to combine
all of them into one data source for analysis.

Here's the kicker - About 70 of those columns are "standard" meaning that
they have the same column header, etc. The rest are variable. This data
was
collected over a period of three years and standardizations were not
employed
very well. So some of those "variable" column headers may overlap or some
may
not.

For instance (using a small subset of total columns as example):

Book A has the following column headers (and related info) in columns
X,Y,Z
respectively:

Column X: Status
Column Y: /Hotel/Accomodations
Column Z: /Credit Card Number

Book B has the following column headers (and related info) in columns
X,Y,Z
respectively:

Column X: /Smoking
Column Y: Status
Column Z: /Badge First Name

Is there ANY way to combine all of those spreadsheets into one data
source?
The logic would probably go something like:

If Sheet B were being added to Sheet A, the system would check to see if
the
column header for Sheet B / Column X existed as a column header in Sheet
A.
If it did exist, the related row data would then be pasted in that
respective
column. If it did not, the column header would be created at the top of
Sheet
A and the related row data would be place under it (but still relative to
the
row that it is associated with).

Does this make sense? I can't for the life of me find any way to do this
other than to manually check which columns match and if they don't, to add
it
as a new column and then move the related row data into that column when
combining the sheets. As you can imagine this will take a long time to
compile. I can use Access to identify these unmatched columns more
effectively, but I have to imagine there is a more elegant solution to
this
problem.

I mean, isn't it a truism that for every problem you encounter there is
someone who has encountered and solved the same problem? Are you out
there?

Thanks again. I will check back periodically as this is a very pressing
issue at the moment. Also, I can best be contacted at
"

thank you,
- S