Macro to compare between two columns - excel

Question

I need to compare two columns and find out what is missing in one of them.
Color available color required color missing
Blue, red (blue,white) or (blue,green)
White (green) or (red)
Blue,white,green (blue,white,pink) or (x,y,z)
I have a list of around 300 rows that I need to work on on a daily basis, which is very time consuming.
Can someone please help me get this information under column color missing?

Answer 1

This is not the type of question that will get answered here. Firstly, you are very unclear what you seek. Secondly, I suspect you will need a lot of code to achieve your objective.
Stack Overflow is for programmers seeking help to improve their code. It is not a free-coding site.
This is my guess of your requirement
Color available color required color missing
Blue, red (blue,white) or (blue,green) (white) or (green)
White (green) or (red) (green) or (red)
Blue,white,green (blue,white,pink) or (x,y,z) pink or (x and y and z)
As far as I know Stack Exchange, the parent site, does not have a site for help with designing programs which I believe is what you need.
You must first design your program. What tasks must be performed to achieve your objective? You then need to attempt to program each of those tasks in VBA. If you fail at a particular task, post your faulty code here with an explanation of its objective. If a task is small and you do not have a clue where to start, a question here might be answered.
First question for you: how much VBA do you know? There seems to be a belief that you can scan the internet for bits of VBA script and stitch then together into working program with minimal knowledge of VBA. I do not share this belief. I have tried searching the internet for answers to what I think are simple questions. I have found answers that I know include the required code but I cannot see how you could extract that code from the noise without VBA knowledge. You can search the internet for "Excel VBA Tutoral" or you can find a book in a good library or bookshop. Spend some time getting a basic understanding of VBA. That investment in time will repay itself quickly.
Below is my attempt at an initial list of tasks.
You imply the number of rows varies from day to day. You need to discover the last used row today. You need to know how to address a particular worksheet cell so you can access its value. You can access worksheet cells directly but it is faster and usually more convenient to copy the worksheet to an array. This is all basic worksheet access information.
In column 1, you have colours (some with capital letters) separated by comma or comma space. To process these colours you need then in an array:
Avail(0) = blue, Avail(1) = red
Avail(0) = white
Avail(0) = blue, Avail(1) = white, Avail(2) = green
The function Split will split strings like these into an array containing the values I have shown: Avail = Split(Col1Value, ",") Function Trim will remove leading and trailing spaces. Function LCase will convert upper case characters to lower case.
Column 2 is more complicated. In all your examples, you have a single " or " and the colour groups are surrounded by brackets. Can there be more than one " or "? Are the groups always surrounded by brackets? Could the spaces around the "or" be omitted so an example could be: (red, green)or(blue,white) or (red, green)or (blue,white)?
If the values in column 2 are inconsistent, I suspect the easiest solution is to make them consistent. For example:
Col2Value = Replace(Col2Value, ")or(", ") or (")
Col2Value = Replace(Col2Value, ") or(", ") or (")
Col2Value = Replace(Col2Value, ")or (", ") or (")
You could then use Split: Alternative = Split(Col2Value, " or ") to give:
Alternative(0) = (blue,white)
Alternative(1) = (blue,green)
For each alternative, you need to trim any spaces, remove the leading and closing brackets and split it like the Col1Value. You now have two arrays and you can search the second for values missing from the first and build a list of missing colours.
I hope this is enough for you to understand what I believe you must do. I have split the total program into small tasks. Gaining access to the worksheet. Splitting column 1 values into separate colours. Making column 2 values consistent if necessary. Splitting Column 2 values into alternatives. Splitting alternatives into required colours. Each of these is a straightforward task which you should be able to solve with relatively simple VBA.
Good luck.