Comparing workbooks?

Hi,

I'm fairly new to Excel, not really used it too much. I was wondering if there's a way to automatically compare 2 workbooks, so that Excel reads back to you the differences between the 2. For example, a row on the first book might read:

1 3 5 7 9

And the same row on the second reads:

1 3 4 8 10

So, Excel would read to me (Assuming 0 is no change)

0 0 -1 +1 +1

Something along those lines? I don't even know where to begin looking for answers!

Many thanks in advance.

You put your first set of data in a sheet called Sheet1, and the second set of data in a sheet called Sheet2. Then in Cell A1 in a third sheet (Sheet3)enter this formula:

=Sheet2!A1-Sheet1!A1

This gives you the difference of the A1 cells in Sheet1 and Sheet2.
Copy this formula to all the cells needed in Sheet3, to compare the whole Range.

If your sheets is in different Workbooks, you can do the same. Open both Workbooks. Choose a sheet to put your result in. This could be in a new Workbook or in a separate sheet on one of the two workbooks you compare.

Select Cell A1 in your result sheet.
Enter "="
Select cell A1 in the first sheet to compare.
Enter "-"
Select cell A1 in the second sheet to compare
Press "ENTER"

Then you get a formula with the correct refferences.
Copy to all other cells that need a compare result.

Bjornar,

Thank you very much for the info, it works perfectly. Slightly embarassed that it was quite so simple though