Excel in one column but not another

What I want to do

Find Items in one column (ColA) that are not in another column (ColB). What to do when I want the result not being highlighted, but have it in another column (ColC) without blank rows.

Example

ColA - ColB - ColC    
1 - 1 - 4
3 - 2 - 8
10 - 3 - 10
4 - 5 - "" 
5 - 7 - ""    
8 - 6 - ""
9 - 9 - ""

What did I try yet

Until now I succeeded to have the following result. I do this with the following formula in column C:

=IF(IFERROR(MATCH(A2;B$2:F$300;0);"")<>"";"";A2) 

Result:

ColA - ColB - ColC
1 - 1 - ""
3 - 2 - ""
10 - 3 - 10
4 - 5 - 4     
5 - 7 - "" 
8 - 6 - 8
9 - 9 - ""

But I want to avoid the blank cells in Col C.

I tried the formula I found in one of the answers on this site:

IFERROR(INDEX($A$2:$A$1999,MATCH(0,IFERROR(MATCH($A$2:$A$1999,$B$2:$B$399,0),COUNTIF($C$1:$C1,$A$2:$A$1999)),0)),"")

… but this does not work. Maybe I adapt this formula in a wrong way…?

One of the best things about Microsoft Excel is that it can be customized to suit your needs and preferences.

Excel has Conditional Formatting that allows you to format a cell based on the value in it. But with a little bit of formula magic, you can also highlight a cell or range of cells based on whether a value exists in some other columns or not.

For example, if you have a dataset with a person’s name and their country, and you want to highlight all the names that are from the US, you can easily do that using conditional formatting.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to highlight a cell or range of cells if the value exists in another column in Excel.

So, let’s get started!

Highlight Cells Based on Value in Another Column

Suppose you have a data set as shown below and you want to highlight all the names in column A if the country in column B is ‘US’.

Below are the steps to do this using Conditional Formatting:

1. Select the column in which you want to highlight the cells (the Names column in our example)
2. Click the Home tab
3. In the Styles group, click on Conditional Formatting
4. In the options that show up, click on the New Rule option. This will open the New Formatting Rules dialog box
5. In the ‘Select a Rule type’ options, click on ‘Use a formula to determine which cells to format’
6. Enter the following formula in the field below: =B2=”US”
7. Click on the Format button
8. In the Fill tab, choose the color in which you want to highlight the cells
9. Click OK
10. Click OK

The above steps would highlight only those names where the country in the adjacent column is the US.

Note that in this example, I have hard-coded the country name in the formula (=B2=”US”). in case you have the country name in a cell, you can also use the reference of the cell instead of using the exact name.

How Does this Work?

When you select a range of cells and apply conditional formatting on it, Excel would go through each of the cells in the selected range and check it using the condition that you have specified (which in our case was the formula =B2=”US”)

When it analyzes cell A2, it checks whether the formula would return True or not. So, it would check cell B2 and see if the value is equal to the US or not.

If the formula returns True, then the cell in column a would get highlighted with the specified format. And if the formula turns FALSE, then nothing would happen.

Similarly, it keeps analyzing all the cells in the Names column and highlights all those where the country name in column B is the US.

Highlight Entire Rows Based on Value in One Column

Another scenario where you can use the same concept is when you want to highlight the entire row based on the value in any one column.

For example, suppose you have a data set as shown below and you want to highlight all the records where the country is ‘US’

We can use a similar concept as we used in the example above, but instead of applying conditional formatting to one column, we’ll have to apply it to the entire data set.

Below are the steps to do this:

1. Select the entire dataset
2. Click the Home tab
3. In the Styles group, click on Conditional Formatting
4. In the options that show up, click on the New Rule option. This will open the New Formatting Rules dialog box
5. In the ‘Select a Rule type’ options, click on ‘Use a formula to determine which cells to format’
6. Enter the following formula in the field below: =$B2=”US”
7. Click on the Format button
8. In the Fill tab, choose the color in which you want to highlight the cells
9. Click OK
10. Click OK

The above steps would highlight all those records where the country in column B is ‘US’

How Does this Work?

When you select a range of cells (including multiple rows and columns), conditional formatting would go through each cell and check the result of the formula that you have specified.

If the result is TRUE, it would highlight the cell, and if the result is FALSE then it would do nothing.

In our example, I would like to highlight all the cells in a row where the country in column B is the US.

This means that no matter what cell is being analyzed in a row, the formula that needs to be analyzed should always check whether the country is the US or not.

And this is done using the below formula:

=$B2="US"

By adding a dollar sign before the column letter B, I have made this a mixed reference. this means that no matter which sale is being analyzed in the row, conditional formatting would always check the cell value in column B and see if that is equal to the US or not.

So when cell A2 is analyzed by conditional formatting, it checks whether the value in B2 is the US or not. and then cell B2 is analyzed, it does the same.

And now when cell A3 is analyzed by conditional formatting, it would check the country name in cell B3, and so on.

This is how you can highlight cells in Excel based on whether the value exists in another cell or not. and you can also highlight an entire record based on the value in one specific column.

I hope you found this tutorial useful.

Other Excel tutorials you may also like:

• How to Highlight Every Other Row in Excel (Conditional Formatting &  VBA)
• How to Find Duplicates in Excel (Conditional Formatting/ Count If/ Filter)
• How to Hide Rows based on Cell Value in Excel
• Using Conditional Formatting with OR Criteria in Excel
• How to Copy Formatting In Excel
• How to Highlight Blank Cells in Excel? 3 Easy Methods!
• How to Change Font Color Based on Cell Value in Excel?

Example: Compare Two Columns and Highlight Mismatched Data

1. Select the entire data set.
2. Click the Home tab.
3. In the Styles group, click on the ‘Conditional Formatting’ option.
4. Hover the cursor on the Highlight Cell Rules option.
5. Click on Duplicate Values.
6. In the Duplicate Values dialog box, make sure ‘Unique’ is selected.

How do I combine two date columns in Excel?

1. BUT….
2. Step 1: Here is the simple formula to combine Date & Time in Excel.
3. Step 2: A2 indices the first date in Date Column & B2 is for Time Column.
4. Step 3: Type this formula = TEXT(A2,”m/dd/yy “)EXT(B2,”hh:mm:ss”) into next column.
5. Step 4: Now you will get Combine Date & Time in Excel.

How do I merge two columns in Excel and keep all data?

Combine data with the Ampersand symbol (&)

1. Select the cell where you want to put the combined data.
2. Type = and select the first cell you want to combine.
3. Type & and use quotation marks with a space enclosed.
4. Select the next cell you want to combine and press enter. An example formula might be =A2&” “&B2.

How do I combine two columns in matching tables?

Combine tables in Excel by column headers

1. On your Excel ribbon, go to the Ablebits tab > Merge group, and click the Combine Sheets button:
2. Select all the worksheets you want to merge into one.
3. Choose the columns you want to combine, Order ID and Seller in this example:
4. Select additional options, if needed.

How do I combine multiple worksheets into one?

On the Excel ribbon, go to the Ablebits tab, Merge group, click Copy Sheets, and choose one of the following options:

1. Copy sheets in each workbook to one sheet and put the resulting sheets to one workbook.
2. Merge the identically named sheets to one.
3. Copy the selected sheets to one workbook.

How do I put two tables next to each other in Word?

You can insert two or more tables next to each other in Microsoft Word 2016: all you have to do is drag-and-drop them to any part of the document.

Can we join two tables without any relation?

The answer to this question is yes, you can join two unrelated tables in SQL and in fact, there are multiple ways to do this, particularly in the Microsoft SQL Server database. The most common way to join two unrelated tables is by using CROSS join, which produces a cartesian product of two tables.

Can we join two tables without common columns?

Yes, you can! The longer answer is yes, there are a few ways to combine two tables without a common column, including CROSS JOIN (Cartesian product) and UNION. The latter is technically not a join but can be handy for merging tables in SQL.

How do I get two columns from different tables in SQL?

Example syntax to select from multiple tables:

1. SELECT p. p_id, p. cus_id, p. p_name, c1. name1, c2. name2.
2. FROM product AS p.
3. LEFT JOIN customer1 AS c1.
4. ON p. cus_id=c1. cus_id.
5. LEFT JOIN customer2 AS c2.
6. ON p. cus_id = c2. cus_id.

Which join is based on all columns in the two tables that have the same column name?

NATURAL JOIN

How can I put two table data in one query?

Different Types of SQL JOINs

1. (INNER) JOIN : Returns records that have matching values in both tables.
2. LEFT (OUTER) JOIN : Returns all records from the left table, and the matched records from the right table.
3. RIGHT (OUTER) JOIN : Returns all records from the right table, and the matched records from the left table.

Why we create multiple tables in database?

Basically a single table is good when data is one-to-one. When you have thousands of rows and columns of data, where the data is one-to-many, multiple tables are better to reduce duplicate data.

How do you update a field from another table in access?

Use a Field in One Table to Update a Field in Another Table

1. Create a standard Select query.
2. Select Query → Update to change the type of query to an update action query.
3. Drag the field to be updated in the target table to the query grid.
4. Optionally specify criteria to limit the rows to be updated.

How do I move data from one table to another in access?

Copy an existing table structure into a new Access database

1. Right-click the existing table name in the Database Window of the original database and click Copy.
2. Close the database Window and open your new database.
3. Under Objects, click Tables. Then, right-click the database Window and click Paste.
4. Enter a name for the new table, choose Structure Only, and then click OK.

What is the difference between a one-to-one join and a one-to-many join?

One-to-one relationships associate one record in one table with a single record in the other table. One-to-many relationships associate one record in one table with many records in the other table.

What is the difference between one-to-one and one-to-many relationship?

A one-to-one relationship is created if both of the related fields are primary keys or have unique indexes. A many-to-many relationship is really two one-to-many relationships with a third table whose primary key consists of two fields ï¿ the foreign keys from the two other tables.

What is this relationship called can be a one-to-one one-to-many many to one or many-to-many relationship?

This type of relationship can be created using Primary key-Foreign key relationship. This kind of Relationship, allows a Car to have multiple Engineers.

Can you have a many to one relationship?

For example, if one department can employ for several employees then, department to employee is a one to many relationship (1 department employs many employees), while employee to department relationship is many to one (many employees work in one department). Most relations between tables are one-to-many.

What is the kind of relationship between ω and ω many to one one to many one-to-one many-to-many?

The frequency mapping is not aliased; that is, the relationship between Ω and ω is one-to-one.

What are the 3 types of relation?

The types of relations are nothing but their properties. There are different types of relations namely reflexive, symmetric, transitive and anti symmetric which are defined and explained as follows through real life examples.

Now your columns of data have successfully merged into your new column.

=INDEX(_my_data,1+INT((ROW(A1)-1)/COLUMNS(_my_data)),MOD(ROW(A1)-1+COLUMNS(_my_data),COLUMNS(_my_data))+1)