How does excels find function actually "find" values?

Find is generally reckoned to be pretty fast. It might depend on search order though - can you post your code?

Sub Main3()
    Dim x As Long
    Dim y As Long
    Dim LastRow As Long
    Dim ws As Worksheet
    
    Dim tempSource As String

    Dim tempSourceRow As Long
    Dim tempDestRow As Long
    
    For Each ws In ActiveWorkbook.Worksheets
        If ws.Name <> "Main" And ws.Name <> "Master" Then
            ws.Activate
            If Range("Y1").Value = "serial_access_name" Then
                LastRow = Cells(Rows.Count, "Y").End(xlUp).Row
                For x = 2 To LastRow
                    '1) Get the serial_access_name off of the worksheet.
                        Range("Y" & x).Select
                        tempSource = ActiveCell.Value
                        tempSourceRow = ActiveCell.Row
                    '2) Find the spot in the database page.
                        Worksheets("Master").Activate
                        tempDestRow = Cells(Rows.Count, "C").End(xlUp).Row
                        Cells(1, 3).Select
                        Cells.Find(What:=tempSource, After:=ActiveCell, LookIn:=xlValues, LookAt:=xlPart, SearchOrder:=xlByRows, SearchDirection:=xlNext, MatchCase:=False, SearchFormat:=False).Activate
                        
                    '3) Move the data from the worksheet to the database.
                        'ws.Activate
                        'Sheets(ws).Range("Y" & tempSourceRow).Select
                        ws.Activate
                        Range("Y" & tempSourceRow).Select
                        'ActiveCell.Offset(0, 1).Activate
                        Range("Z" & tempSourceRow, "AD" & tempSourceRow).Copy Destination:=Sheets("Master").Range("E" & tempDestRow)
                    '4) Check next serial_access_name until all are checked.
                Next x
            End If
        End If
    Next ws
End Sub

I am taking several sheets of data and moving them into one large sheet which originally I thought might be faster then multiple sheets. However, it seems I might be wrong about that idea.

I came across this thread while searching for a solution to this problem

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...-binary-search

Basically it looks like I should set up a binary search since I know the data is in order. I am going to close this thread but if anyone has ideas/thoughts I'd still like to hear them and will check back periodically. Thanks for your help dilipandey. You confirm what I was guessing to be true about the excel find.

You could speed up your code a little by removing the Activates and Selects.

You could speed up your code a little by removing the Activates and Selects.

Excel threw an error when I used

Sheets(ws).Range("Z" & tempSourceRow, "AD" & tempSourceRow).Copy Destination:=Sheets("Master").Range("E" & tempDestRow)

Type mismatch to be exact so I just separately activated the correct sheet and then copied the data.

ws.Range("Z" & tempSourceRow, "AD" & tempSourceRow).Copy Destination:=Sheets("Master").Range("E" & tempDestRow)