I'm consolidating a lot of data from several spreadsheet files into a single,
large spreadsheet. From all this data, I only want to select a single
instance of the occurrance of a value in a column, rather than all the
instances that may occur.

For example, I might have 15 occurrances of the value "15" in the critical
data values column, 10 of the value "rat", and so forth. How do I get just a
single value of "15", a single value of "rat", etc in my new data table?

Do I use a form of HLOOKUP or VLOOKUP, and how do I limit the occurrance of
values returned in my new set of data to a single entry?

Your answers are appreciated.

Thanks,

Dave