Search
Where's Ann?

She's on the move...

02.02.2012: Hosting a Privacy After Hours event in Harrisburg.

02.16.2012: Co-presenting Virtual Security: Best Practices for Remote Workers.

03.09.2012: Offering tips on handling conflict at the Society for Technical Communication's Mid-Atlantic Conference.

03.21.2012: Presenting Virtual Success: Best Practices for the Remote Worker for STC's New England Chapter.

05.19-05.24.2012:  Attending and presenting at the Annual Summit of the Society for Technical Communication, Chicago, IL. Also sponsoring an event featuring the Rough Drafts, STC's homegrown band. 

Connect to Ann!
Blogger login
« Finding merged cells in Excel | Main | Self-determined vs. stubborn »
Tuesday
Mar022010

Creating a list of unique records

So my insurance guy and client Jack Grove wants to send a mailing to people who have a homeowner policy but do not have car insurance through his agency. If someone has both policies or only a car insurance policy, he will not receive the mailing.

There are any number of ways to do this in Microsoft Excel, but I've attached a modest attempt. Using this method, each record in each list is tagged with an identifier (a combination of name and telephone number). Then the records are compared based on identifier. You can sort a list based on a true/false column, to identify just the missing records.

For more information, check out these Microsoft-generated articles:

Use Excel to compare two lists of data

For an alternate approach involving advanced filtering: How to use advanced filter to exclude records in Excel 2000 and How to use advanced filter to exclude records