Grouping data columns by shared values

Posted by Lenna on Super User See other posts from Super User or by Lenna
Published on 2012-09-25T18:13:07Z Indexed on 2012/09/25 21:40 UTC
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I don't know how to properly describe what I need to do, so I will give an example. A colleague has a data set in Excel like so:

Col A    Col B    Col C
aaaaa    aaaaa    bbbbb
bbbbb    ccccc    ccccc
ccccc    ddddd    eeeee

The end result should be something like this:

Col A    Col B    Col C
aaaaa    aaaaa
bbbbb             bbbbb
ccccc    ccccc    ccccc
         ddddd
                  eeeee

Or even:

      Col A    Col B    Col C
aaaaa Yes      Yes      No
bbbbb Yes      No       Yes

etc.

(if it helps, the columns are protein extraction methods and the letters are protein IDs - we need to determine which proteins are extracted by which methods)

My colleague is doing this by hand, but there is enough data that it would be really helpful to automate it.

Is there a formula in Excel to do this automatically?

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