How to get Excel to compare/highlight differences in values in different columns in different workbooks.

Question

Hello,

I work in the commercial truck sales industry. I spend much of day working in Excel. At the end of the week, I download I report from one of our O.E.M. partners that tells me when our trucks will be built. I then spend a few hours comparing those dates to the dates in our internal tracking spreadsheet. I am wondering if there is a way to automate this process? Can excel scan the columns to tell me if a truck's build date does not match what we have on our spreadsheet? Or if it is missing from our spreadsheet?

Thanks.

KE

Answer 1

You can do this with a macro. The basic processing is pretty simple:

• Loop through the trucks in the report. For each truck
  • Loop through the trucks in your tracking spreadsheet
    • If no match, note that in the report (e.g., set the background color)
    • If dates don't match, note that in the report and/or the tracking spreadsheet (e.g., set the font color)

You can also perform other actions if you wish, such as adding a missing truck to your tracking spreadsheet or updating the date.