Expert: Aidan Heritage - 11/6/2009

Question
I work at an academic institution and we are working with academic records. I have two worksheets - one has the names of all students who have graduated in the past academic year (column B), the other has the names of students (column A) I have had contact with over the last 5 years and what type (column B) of contact (coded through acronyms). What I would like to do is pull the names from the graduation worksheet that I have had a specific type of contact with. For instance I have worked with five students on academic skills and three on schedule preparation. I want to know if any of the students I worked with on academic skills in the past 5 years have graduated in the last year.

Thank you for your help.

Answer
I think it's PROBABLY easiest to do it with a combination of a COUNTIF worksheet function - this would count the name on the contact sheet against all entries on the graduation sheet - so you would get a 1 return for the matches and a zero return for the non matches - then data, filter, autofilter would allow you to filter on the matches (1's) and the type of contact.  

Hope this makes sense but if I can help further let me know - my email if it helps is aidan.heritage@virgin.net