Is there an elegant and quick technical solution to this?

[airborne_artist]

I have two lists of company names, list A is about 800 long, and list B (which contains all of list A plus further names) is 1100 long. They are in txt form, and in alphabetical order.

Can anyone devise a tidy way of making a list that represents B minus A? I have Excel, Word, Access and a pencil at my disposal!

[Saab Dastard]

Have a look at GNU Textutils (http://www.gnu.org/software/textutils/textutils.html).

I use it a fair amount - it is the dog's undercarriage thingies! And being GNU it is FREE!

SD

[Captain Gadget]

AA
I would use Access mate (I'm assuming that you know the basics here). Import the two lists into separate tables, then create a new query which contains the company name fields from both lists. Create a relationship in the query design grid between the name fields of tables A and B using type 'Include all records from B and only those records from A where the joined fields are equal '. In the 'criteria' field under the company name field from B specify 'Is Null'.

Then simply run your query. The results displayed will be those records that exist in list B that do not exist in list A.

The beauty of this method is that as long as you save the query, and even if you subsequently update either or both lists (within Access, either directly or by importing the revised info) then it will still work as advertised.

Sounds complicated, but in practice should take no longer than a few mins.

Gadget :ok:

Feel free to PM me if you would like any more help.

[Mac the Knife]

Have a look here - http://www.thefreecountry.com/programming/filecomparison.shtml

WinMerge - http://winmerge.org/ - is pretty good(and free).

:ok:

[IO540]

I have a DOS command line utility, written in the 1980s, which removes duplicate lines from a CRLF-separated text file. There is no upper limit on the file size. Email me if this is of interest.

[BOAC]

A quick look at 'WinMerge' seems to show well. May be worth stickying in at the top, SD?

[Mac the Knife]

Also DiffUtils for Windows (free) - http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/diffutils.htm -if you can cope with the command line (not difficult).

Very fast.