How to align and merge matching values, from various columns, in excel - excel

Question

I have had some success matching data from various columns and creating a new data output. Here is what I typically start with;
COL A COL B COL C COL D
ITEM VALUE ITEM VALUE2
---- ---- ---- ----
A 1 B 100
B 2 A 200
C 3 F 300
G 4 E 400
H 5 C 500
J 6 M 600
And I can achieve this result using VLOOKUP;
COL E COL F COL G
ITEM VALUE VALUE2
---- ---- ----
A 1 200
B 2 100
C 3 500
G 4
H 5
J 6
But what I'm really after is this: both matching AND merging;
COL E COL F COL G
ITEM VALUE VALUE2
---- ---- ----
A 1 200
B 2 100
C 3 500
E 400
F 300
G 4
H 5
J 6
M 600
I'm punching a tad above my weight class with this one, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

With something like:
=COUNTIF(A:A,C2)
in a column and copied down you should get indication of which items are not already present in ColumnA. Sort with C:D on that basis and simply copy the items associated with 0 to ColumnA and their values to ColumnD, then sort and apply your VLOOKUP.

Answer 2

The following is based on: http://www.get-digital-help.com/2009/05/25/create-a-drop-down-list-containing-only-unique-distinct-alphabetically-sorted-text-values-using-excel-array-formula/#comment-74005
It's a great site for clever use of Excel formulas and does a good job of explaining the monster formulas below, creating dynamic named ranges, and how to work with array formulas. Look at it!
My solution is not quite as elegant as I'd like but it works. So, you'll need to create some named ranges.
One for the items in COL A (e.g. "Items1") and one for the items in COL C (e.g. "Items2")
In COL G we'll have another List "AllItems1". In COL H we'll have another List "AllItems2". You'll need to make a named range of "AllItems1" too.
The array formula in COL G is:
=IFERROR(IFERROR(INDEX(Items1,MATCH(0,IF(MAX(NOT(COUNTIF($G$1:$G1,Items1))* COUNTIF(Items1,">"&Items1)+1))=(COUNTIF(Items1,">"&Items1)+1),0,1),0)),INDEX(Items2,MATCH(0,IF(MAX(NOT(COUNTIF($G$1:$G1,Items2))*(COUNTIF(Items2,">"&Items2)+1))=(COUNTIF(Items2,">"&Items2)+1),0,1),0))),"")
Which is a mouthful. This cascades through each list (i.e. Items1 and Items2) and gives you a non-repetitive sorta alphabetized list of the items in "Items1" and "Items2".
COL G is really just an intermediate step to get us to COL H. I haven't found a way to combine two lists without doing this step. Let me know if you find a better way.
To get a non-repetitive AND alphabetized list of the items we put the following array formula in COL H:
=IFERROR(INDEX(AllItems1,MATCH(0,IF(MAX(NOT(COUNTIF($H$1:$H1,AllItems1))*(COUNTIF(AllItems1,">"&AllItems1)+1))=(COUNTIF(AllItems1,">"&AllItems1)+1),0,1),0)),"")
Then we do VLOOKUP s off of "AllItems2".
Put the following VLOOKUP in COL I :
=IFERROR(VLOOKUP($H2,$A$2:$B$7,2,0),"")
And put the following VLOOKUP in COL J:
=IFERROR(VLOOKUP($H2,$C$2:$D$7,2,0),"")
Of course, you could make "AllItems2" a named range also and use that in the VLOOKUP s.
I think that gets you what you want.