We love to compare. The instinct to compare leaves no one. Even my two year old twins compare their toys with each other (and fight).
It would make Excel hugely popular if Microsoft builds a handy data comparison tool right in to it. Alas, they have customizable ribbon, 3d effects & equation editor…
Since comparison is one of the main uses of Excel, we have written extensively about it here.
[Read: Compare 2 lists quickly, Compare 2 lists – detailed tutorial]
But there is always one more interesting comparison problem. Today, I want to share one such problem, based on a comment left by N-Man.
The Problem – Compare 2 lists with another 2 lists
I have to do a comparison between to sets of staff lists, where name that are highlighting in the first list who do not appear in the second list have left the firm, and people highlighting in the second list who do not appear in the first are new arrivals.
To further muddy the issue, when I say ‘list’, what I actually have is one column for 1st names and another for surnames in both instances.
Assuming N-Man managed the cast of Harry Potter movies, may be he was talking about something like this:
The Solution – SUMPRODUCT, Conditional Formatting & Coffee
Lets bring our most important ingredient for this problem first – coffee.
Once you pour yourself a strong cup of this, the solution for our problem should become apparent.
- The first step is to give names to all the four lists. While this is not mandatory, it simplifies our solution and reduces our blood pressure.
- So lets call them list1, list 2, list 3 & list4.
- Now, we need to highlight all items in list1 & list2, whenever they do not appear in list3 & list4. (and vice-versa)
- This is where SUMPRODUCT comes in to picture.
- Assuming the lists are in columns B,C, E,F and starting from row 6,
- =SUMPRODUCT(–(list3&list4=$B6&$C6))=0 will be TRUE if the fist item Minister Rufus Scrimgeour does not appear in second set of lists.
- As you can see, we are exploiting the power of SUMPRODUCT to concatenate both lists (list3, list4) dynamically and check in that for the name in B6&C6.
- So the portion (list3&list4=$B6&$C6) gives us a bunch of TRUE, FALSE values based on the comparison of B6&C6 with in list3&list4.
- The double negative sign — is used to convert a set of logical (boolean) results to numbers (1s and 0s) as SUMPRODUCT is meant to work with numbers, not boolean values.
- Then, we see if the result is 0 (SUMPRODUCT(–(list3&list4=$B6&$C6))=0), to see if there were no matches. Had there been at least one match, the SUMPRODUCT would return a positive number.
But wait, We need to highlight
Since we want to highlight the missing items in each list, we need to use Conditional Formatting and feed this SUMPRODUCT formula to it.
So, select the first 2 lists (list1, list2), go to Conditional Formatting > Add rule.
Select the rule type as use a formula to determine which cells to format
Now, type the formula =SUMPRODUCT(–(list3&list4=$B6&$C6))=0
And set the formatting to whatever you want.
Click OK and we are done!
Apply the same formatting rules for List3 & List 4, but this time the rule becomes =SUMPRODUCT(–(list1&list2=$E6&$F6))=0
That is all.
Download Example Workbook
Click here to download the example workbook to understand this technique better. Examine the CF rules to learn more.
How would you compare?
The problem posed by N-Man mimics many real world comparison problems. You want to compare 2 lists, but subject to some condition. For example you want to see which customer product combinations are new in a particular month (compared to previous month, say). While we can use helper columns & then write simple COUNTIF formula to do the same, using SUMPRODUCT allows us to extend this model in many more ways.
What about you? Do you face similar comparison problems at work? How do you solve them? Please share your techniques and ideas using comments.
Learn More ways to Compare
If your work involves fair bit of comparison & related data analysis, check out these articles to learn more.
- Compare 2 lists quickly using Conditional Formatting
- Compare 2 lists – detailed tutorial
- Compare 2 lists – a special scenario
- Learn how to use Excel Conditional Formatting for comparison and more
- Introduction to Excel SUMPRODUCT formula
- More on comparison, SUMPRODUCT & Conditional Formatting
Want to Learn More Formulas? Join Our Crash Course
If you want to learn SUMPRODUCT and 40 other day to day formulas, and how to use them in situations like this, then consider my Excel Formula Crash Course. It has 31 lessons split in to 6 modules and makes you awesome in Excel formulas.
Now, if you excuse me, I have a comparison problem to solve. My daughter is comparing her hello kitty toy with my son’s scooter and now they are fighting!
24 Responses to “10 Supercool UI Improvements in Excel 2010”
The best improvement by far is the Collapse Ribbon ^ button !
Kind of a shame that some of the best improvements are actually returns to old functionality. One thing I don't like is that to get to recent files I need to do an extra click after File - apart from Save As, that's why I'm usually in the File menu. I like the sparkline options, though they are still as not fully featured as some of the free and pay options out there.
The collapse button for the ribbon menu is good news. Can you make the ribbon menus stick too?
Nine improvements, not ten. You can also select multiple objects in 2007. Click on the Find & Select item at the far right of the Home tab, and the dropdown looks remarkably like your 2010 screenshot.
@Jon.. Thank you. Dumb me, I somehow thought we couldnt select objects in Excel 2007. Just saw the "select menu" and it is there. I have corrected the post and removed the point. I have added the "you can make your own ribbons" instead. Thanks once again.
@Arti: what do you mean by make ribbons stick?
@Alex: May be it is my installation, but when I go to "File menu" I see "recent files" by default.
For example, if I am working with one of the contextual ribbon menus (Pivot tables, Drawing/Chart etc), as soon as I click away from the selected object, the menu tabs vanish. If I click on the object again immediately, then Excel will remember what I was looking at, but if I wander away and click on a Pivot, then back again on the Chart, the menus will 'appear' but not get activated, thereby causing much annoyance and additional clicking.
I want to "pin" the whole menu (not invididual commands) somehow, so that I can have the menu there for the length of the time I am working with graphics. Excel 2003 used to have the Drawing toolbar you could detach and hover while you were working, but this functionality disappeared in Excel 2007.
My thought was Excel should just allow a 'pin', similar to the Recently Opened files menu, for the Ribbon Menus as well. If I have not selected any Drawing object, the commands can be greyed out, but I want the menu as a whole to 'stick'.
@Arti... I think MS solved this problem differently. When I select a pivot and go to "design" tab Excel 2010 remembers this and automatically takes me to "design" tab when I reselect the pivot.
Apart from this you can also define your own ribbon with all the things you normally do. See the above article (I have added this after Jon's comments)
Nice feature. About time for a upgrade for MS Office
Oh... okay. That might be a start. I'd probably just copy-paste the Drawing tab haha. Thanks. I'll definitely give Excel 2010 a try.
Btw - have you considered getting into / gotten into the world of Excel as it meets SharePoint?
Actually, the replacement new thing is probably better than all the rest. One thing that the designers of the Office 2007 ignored was allowing regular users to customize their own interface. Office 2010's interface was expanded in this way to address the huge uproar.
Is there still a limit on how many things you can add to the QAT bar? (I'm too lazy to look myself.)
@Jeff.. it seems to take quite a few, but only shows one line and gives a little arrow button at the end. (summary: shucks!)
The best thing is you can edit the ribbon directly from excel, so now i can create my own bar with just the things I use regularly!
One of the annoying things in 07 for me is the Add-Ins menu bar - in 03 I could keystroke directly to menu add ins.. In 07 I needed an extra keystroke just to activate the add-in menu, then the keystrokes as normal.. Hope this marek sense..
John -
If you remember the old Excel 2003 Alt-key shortcuts, you can still use them in 2007. To get to the Add-In dialog:
Alt-T-I
Dear Arti & Chandoo
Seen your comments over some issues. Hope you are form India, gone through your comment expecting a pin to command it as a whole, great, hope if someone out of MS have read it, it may be kept in mind while the next R & D of Office Ver. 16
Just incase someone forgot CTRL+F1 will collapse the ribbon.
[...] was pleasantly surprised when I ran Microsoft Excel 2010 for first time. It felt smooth, fast, responsive and looked great on my [...]
I like the sparklines, and the ability to modify the charts
How do you get rid of the advertisment on the right hand side? If you upgrade then will it take off the ads?
Once again Microsoft has re-decorated the Office and we are NOT pleased!
The graphics object selector can be found in the Home ribbon under Find & Select, Select Objects near the bottom of the drop down. You can make it part of the Quick Access toolbar by right click over it and selecting Add to Quick Access toolbar.
The graphics "cursor" will now appear on the mini-toolbar at the top left of the window.
How to get rid of "Add-Ins" button in Backstage (File)" menu by means of XML code, i.e. to hide, to delete or to disable this button?
This button is usually situated in the Backstage menu between "Help" and "Options" buttons.
Vladimir, did you ever get an answer to your question?
I am tying to customize the ribbon UI for a file using XML, and this is precisely the piece I can't figure out. I can hide other tabs, remove items from QAT and backstage - all except the options that are showing up under add-ins in backstage. If there is an XML syntax for referencing this thing and making it invisible, I cannot find it.
Hey, nice tutorial. Please check my video tutorial on similar topic at the below link and provide your comments:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeIFc0jYjpA