Finding commonalities among various groups

I'm not sure if this is something excel can do, but I'll try my best to describe it. I am an administrator for a Learning Management System and the learner groups I work with have varying degrees of crossover with the training they receive. I assign training in packaged curricula, containing multiple courses. I'm wondering if excel can use this information to help me design the smallest number of unique curricula while still covering the training needs of each learner group.

For example:

Learner Group	Training required
Location A	Course 1, Course 2, Course 3
Location B	Course 1, Course 3, Course 4
Location C	Course 1, Course 2, Course 3, Course 4
Location D	Course 1, Course 3, Course 4

In this example Locations B & D receive the same training requirements (Courses 1,3, & 4), so I could assign the same curricula to both of these locations. So in total for this example, I would need 3 curricula: one for Location A, one for Location C, and one for Locations B & D. In reality though I have over 100 locations and 25 different courses, so applying this on a bigger scale could save a lot of duplicate work and confusion down the road.

Is this something excel could help with? Would a pivot table work? Is there a name/word for this?

Thanks!

Hi Crooza,

Thanks for your help! I used the doc you attached as a template, but when I started to add in location rows (and expanding the number of courses) the formula stops working. This could definitely be user error on my part, but would you mind taking a look?

You'll notice locations B & E both say they match for Curriculum 2, but Location B contains an additional Course N, which location E doesn't need. There's a similar problem between Locations C & F.

That did the trick! Thought I still had errors for awhile there until learning that VLOOKUP has a 250 character limit. Thanks for your help, and the education!