Copmaring two lists and extracting all unequal rows

[nivoe]

Hello everyone

I've managed to solve this problem with formulas but they are slowing down my workbook as excel needs ~2mb for a list of about 2000x150 cells.
So, I thought there might be an easy solution in VBA?

Let's say, I have a "Sheet1" with the list

	A	B
1	Txt1	Txt3
2	Txt2	Txt4

and a "Sheet2" with the list

	A	B
1	Txt1	Txt3
2	Txt2	Bla

What do I want to achieve?

In "Sheet 3" I want to extract all rows from the list in "Sheet2" that are different from the rows in the list in "Sheet1" (at least in one cell).
That would give me:

	A	B
1	Txt2	Bla

As my full list contains plenty of empty cells, it would be cool if I didn't have to put code into every cell to check for equality.

Thank you in advance
I appreciate the help here a lot

[arlu1201]

Does your original file also have the same number of columns (3) ?

Also, which is the common field between both the sheets?

[nivoe]

No, the original file has two sheets each with 2000 rows and 150 columns (might grow in the future). I am trying to extract all rows from the list in the 2nd sheet that have at least one different cell entry as in the 1st sheet. The "filtered" and thus smaller list should be shown in the 3rd sheet.

The two lists have the exact same column names. They only have different entries (e.g. list one in Sheet1!D10 equals "TRUE" whereas the same cell in Sheet2 is empty).

[arlu1201]

So each column has to be compared with the other column from the 2nd sheet?

[nivoe]

Well, see, this is the conditional formatting I use to color the unequal cells:

=IF(Sheet1!A1=A1;0;1)

The above formula colors me every cell in Sheet2 which is different from the exact same cell in Sheet1.
That is perfect so far.

What I'd like to achieve now, is:

"Copy every row in Sheet2 which is different to the exact same row in Sheet1 to Sheet3"

So, in that sense I think I should be checking the rows instead of the columns, or? That is my question here. How should I be checking it?

- Checking all cells forces 300'000 formulas to trigger (= very slow)
- I have not yet seen a function in Excel that compares whole arrays or lists

That's why I thouhgt there might be an easy VBA solution, if only I knew how to use it

[arlu1201]

Sure, i can help you out if you can give me more information. Can i use the color of the cells to check for discrepancies? I mean, if i find even once cell in the row having that color that you apply using conditional formatting, it should stop checking the rest of the cells in that row and copy that row to sheet3.

Why dont you attach a sample file? It may be clear after seeing it.

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[nivoe]

Ok

As you can see, in the teststuff.xlsx, I'd like to have the rows 14, 16 to 21 copied into the 3rd sheet.

Is it possible with VBA?

Thanks

[arlu1201]

Try this code

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Copy the Excel VBA code
Select the workbook in which you want to store the Excel VBA code
Hold the Alt key, and press the F11 key, to open the Visual Basic Editor
Choose Insert | Module
Where the cursor is flashing, choose Edit | Paste

To run the Excel VBA code:
Choose View | Macros
Select a macro in the list, and click the Run button

Note: I used a worksheet called "Temp" to do the comparisons. The macro needed a common field between both the sheets, so i inserted serial numbers in both sheets which were later deleted. The output is in Sheet3.

[nivoe]

Hey arlu1201

Thank you very much. I managed to solve it differently, but some of your code snippets look very interesting for future use.
The whole wishes for my sheet have changed, so at the moment I am occupied with other things.

I'll see how much of this code I can use once I face my new "realities".
I'll get in touch

Thanks again