Compare two spreadsheets and get missing records

Question

I have two CSV documents. The first has 10.000 rows with 50 columns, with the first column being a unique SKU (stock keeping unit). The second document with 9.500 rows using the same columns and identifiers.

I simply want to create a third document with the 500 missing records.

Is this possible with excel?

Answer 1

1. First copy the second CSV (with 9500 rows) in a blank spreadsheet.
2. Give a background color (say yellow) to the cells having content.
3. Now copy the first CSV into the spreadsheet appending it to the bottom of the first CSV
4. Use 'Remove Duplicates' (in 2007 you can find it in Data tab) feature on the entire spreadsheet.
5. After remove duplicates has completed, cells not having the background color given in step (2) found at the bottom of the spreadsheet are the missing records

Answer 2

I've used Beyond Compare by Scooter Software to do something similar. Don't know if it is supported by Excel directly.

Beyond Compare is one of my favorite pieces of software. It is so useful.