Comments on: Identify duplicate invoice records using conditional formatting in excel http://www.get-digital-help.com/2009/05/08/identify-duplicate-invoice-records-using-conditional-formatting-in-excel/ Quality tech resource Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:34:51 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.1 hourly 1 By: David Wilding http://www.get-digital-help.com/2009/05/08/identify-duplicate-invoice-records-using-conditional-formatting-in-excel/comment-page-1/#comment-1288 David Wilding Wed, 12 Aug 2009 20:19:54 +0000 http://www.get-digital-help.com/?p=1400#comment-1288 My scenario is tracking employees who complete online training. I capture their name, id, class taken, and date. Any employee is free to take a plethora of different courses and they could take them all on the same day if they want. What I am trying to do is see if any employee has taken any course more than once in any given day. I will count a completion of a course multiple times for any employee as long as it isn't completed in the same day. I actually came up with a solution using what I learned from this tutorial and another one of yours. I am creating a cell that has all the fields concatenated and then searching for multiple copies of that value in the field. Then I'll do the conditional format based off of that. What I was wanting to do was requiring array formulas which didn't work in the conditional format. By splitting it out this way, I didn't have to use array formulas and it still works. My scenario is tracking employees who complete online training. I capture their name, id, class taken, and date. Any employee is free to take a plethora of different courses and they could take them all on the same day if they want. What I am trying to do is see if any employee has taken any course more than once in any given day. I will count a completion of a course multiple times for any employee as long as it isn't completed in the same day.

I actually came up with a solution using what I learned from this tutorial and another one of yours. I am creating a cell that has all the fields concatenated and then searching for multiple copies of that value in the field. Then I'll do the conditional format based off of that. What I was wanting to do was requiring array formulas which didn't work in the conditional format. By splitting it out this way, I didn't have to use array formulas and it still works.

]]> By: admin http://www.get-digital-help.com/2009/05/08/identify-duplicate-invoice-records-using-conditional-formatting-in-excel/comment-page-1/#comment-1287 admin Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:19:01 +0000 http://www.get-digital-help.com/?p=1400#comment-1287 How do you identify duplicate records? Are they identical in column A, B, C, D, E and F? (See picture above) How do you identify duplicate records? Are they identical in column A, B, C, D, E and F? (See picture above)

]]> By: David Wilding http://www.get-digital-help.com/2009/05/08/identify-duplicate-invoice-records-using-conditional-formatting-in-excel/comment-page-1/#comment-1285 David Wilding Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:40:00 +0000 http://www.get-digital-help.com/?p=1400#comment-1285 So close. Go into your table of data and change all the dates, vendors, amounts, and clients around and you'll notice that the conditional format will not notice that the records are different. Every isnumber of your matches will come back true, so the condition is met. The match will return a reference to the first row that matches it, so even if it is only in the data once and it's the 13th record, 13 will be returned to the function which will make the isnumber function return true. The only thing that is making your cells not be gray is that they don't meet the first condition of your if funtion... their paid amount doesn't equal 0. In your scenario though, those fields most likely wouldn't ever change. In the spreadsheet I'm working with, my data could be different. I am thoroughly bummed about this though because I really would love to find the functionality that this tutorial proclaims to have but doesn't. By the way, as I've been searching for this solution for the past couple hours, yours has been the easiest tutorial to follow. If you do find a way to accomplish this task without macros, please let me know. So close. Go into your table of data and change all the dates, vendors, amounts, and clients around and you'll notice that the conditional format will not notice that the records are different. Every isnumber of your matches will come back true, so the condition is met. The match will return a reference to the first row that matches it, so even if it is only in the data once and it's the 13th record, 13 will be returned to the function which will make the isnumber function return true. The only thing that is making your cells not be gray is that they don't meet the first condition of your if funtion... their paid amount doesn't equal 0. In your scenario though, those fields most likely wouldn't ever change. In the spreadsheet I'm working with, my data could be different.

I am thoroughly bummed about this though because I really would love to find the functionality that this tutorial proclaims to have but doesn't. By the way, as I've been searching for this solution for the past couple hours, yours has been the easiest tutorial to follow.

If you do find a way to accomplish this task without macros, please let me know.

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