Create table of every unique comdination from several lists - excel

Question

I have fours lists in Excel of arbitraty lenght.
A B C D
A1 B1 C1 D1
A2 B2 C2 D2
A3 B3 D3
A4 D4
D5
I want to create one table that has every combination from the lists as rows.
A B C D
A1 B1 C1 D1
A1 B1 C1 D2
...
A4 B3 C2 D5
Is there any simple way to do this in Excel - using Excel functionality, formulas or VBA?

Answer 1

If you have your four lists next to each other, highlight the data and insert a pivot table.
Add each of the columns to the "rows" section of the pivot table.
Right-click on each field in turn and click on "Field Settings".
Set the Layout and print to show tabular form, repeated item labels and items with no data as follows.
And this is the resulting table.
I suspect you'll want to delete the rows which contain 1 or more (blank) rows.
This is probably easiest by adding a formula to column E along the lines of
=IF(A2="(blank)",1,0)
Repeat this for the other columns, Add them up and sort by the total.
Delete all rows that have a non-zero entry.

Answer 2

Some nested for statements should handle this problem. Just put this in the VBA for your project and it will create a macro called CreateTable() which should put the table in a new worksheet for you.
Sub CreateTable()
'Creates a table will all combinations of values from four columns
Dim a, b, c, d As Range
'Activates sheet that has data on it to be copied to table
Worksheets("Sheet1").Activate 'Change Sheet1 to the name of your sheet
'Change A2 to first cell of data you want to be copied over
Set a = Range("A2", Range("A2").End(xlDown))
Set b = Range("B2", Range("B2").End(xlDown))
Set c = Range("C2", Range("C2").End(xlDown))
Set d = Range("D2", Range("D2").End(xlDown))
Dim i As Integer
i = 1 'Row number of the first row of data for the table of combinations
Worksheets("Sheet2").Activate 'Change Sheet2 to name of sheet you want the table to be put on
For Each cellA In a.Cells
For Each cellB In b.Cells
For Each cellC In c.Cells
For Each cellD In d.Cells
Worksheets("Sheet2").Cells(i, 1) = cellA.Value
Worksheets("Sheet2").Cells(i, 2) = cellB.Value
Worksheets("Sheet2").Cells(i, 3) = cellC.Value
Worksheets("Sheet2").Cells(i, 4) = cellD.Value
i = i + 1
Next cellD
Next cellC
Next cellB
Next cellA
End Sub

Answer 3

You should show what you've tried already and give specifics of where your data is coming from, but here's a VBA solution. Loops through each item in a given column, for as many rows as there are total combinations of items.
Sub Combination_Table()
Dim rList1 As Range
Dim rList2 As Range
Dim rList3 As Range
Dim rList4 As Range
Dim lLength1 As Long
Dim lLength2 As Long
Dim lLength3 As Long
Dim lLength4 As Long
Dim lRowcounter As Long
Sheets(1).Activate
With Sheets(1)
lLength1 = .Range("A" & .Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Row - 1
lLength2 = .Range("B" & .Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Row - 1
lLength3 = .Range("C" & .Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Row - 1
lLength4 = .Range("D" & .Rows.Count).End(xlUp).Row - 1
Set rList1 = .Range("A2:A" & lLength1)
Set rList2 = .Range("B2:B" & lLength2)
Set rList3 = .Range("C2:C" & lLength3)
Set rList4 = .Range("D2:D" & lLength4)
End With
'The above marks the ranges containing the original un-combined lists,
'with no duplicates and assuming row 1 is the header and all data is on
'columns A-D, without blanks.
rowcounter = 0
Sheets(2).Activate
For i = 1 To lLength1
For j = 1 To lLength2
For k = 1 To lLength3
For l = 1 To lLength4
rowcounter = rowcounter + 1
Sheets(2).Range("A" & rowcounter).Formula = rList1(i, 1).Text
Sheets(2).Range("B" & rowcounter).Formula = rList2(j, 1).Text
Sheets(2).Range("C" & rowcounter).Formula = rList3(k, 1).Text
Sheets(2).Range("D" & rowcounter).Formula = rList4(l, 1).Text
'This changes the text in columns A-D for the given rowcount, to the current
'iteration of the current looped value from the above lists
Next l
Next k
Next j
Next i
End Sub

Answer 4

This Works too and this is simpler.
Sub t()
Dim sht As Worksheet
Dim LastRow As Long, lastcol As Long
Dim i As Integer, j As Integer, k As Integer
Set sht = ThisWorkbook.Sheets("Sheet1")
LastRow = sht.Range("A1").CurrentRegion.Rows.Count
lastcol = sht.Range("A1").CurrentRegion.Columns.Count
k = 0
For i = 2 To LastRow
j = 1
k = k + 1
For j = 1 To lastcol
sht.Cells(i, j).Value = sht.Cells(1, j) & k
Next
Next
End Sub