Using Excel 97. I have strings of text, which comprise a unique key in an
Excel spreadsheet. Each week a new spreadsheet is compiled along with this
unique key

I have the current - prior unique keys side by side in a separate sheet tab.
I tried using the EXACT text function to identify matching records, but my
formula only finds matches if next to one another.

How do I get it to find any matches in rows above or below? My current
formula looks something like:

=EXACT($A1, $B$1:$B$300)

My actual data in many cases is larger than 300 rows.

Thanks for any help/suggestions

You could see if there was a match in column B (not case-sensitive) using a
formula like:

=isnumber(match(a1,b:b,0))

I'm not sure what you're doing, but Chip Pearson has some techniques for dealing
with duplicates:

http://www.cpearson.com/excel/duplicat.htm

JHL wrote:

Using Excel 97. I have strings of text, which comprise a unique key in an
Excel spreadsheet. Each week a new spreadsheet is compiled along with this
unique key

I have the current - prior unique keys side by side in a separate sheet tab.
I tried using the EXACT text function to identify matching records, but my
formula only finds matches if next to one another.

How do I get it to find any matches in rows above or below? My current
formula looks something like:

=EXACT($A1, $B$1:$B$300)

My actual data in many cases is larger than 300 rows.

Thanks for any help/suggestions

--

Dave Peterson