Linking two spreadsheets based on common field

My dear Excel gurus:

I have two spreadsheets that have the same number of fields and similar data (voltages) at buses for two sequential years.

I need to run a comparison study of the data for these two years. Wherever the bus names are identical, I need to display the data on the same line. The entries for which the bus names are not identical cannot be compared, and are therefore not of interest.

Is there an easy way to automatically do this in Excel? Any suggestions will be appreciated.

Ansonicus

use the offset and match functions to find similar bus names in sheet 2, and bring back the voltage and display it next to the sheet1 voltage.

Name the range of cells containing bus names in sheet2 as sht2busnames

In sheet 1 in the column next to the voltages, lets say we are on row 2 column C of the spreadsheet

=offset(sheet2!$a$1,match(a2,sht2busnames,0),1)

failure to find a match will give an error message which you can trap out using ISERROR

Thanks robert111. I think that will work just fine.

if not.. you could link the sheets to access and make a query to link up the two tables too ...