I am working with raw data in Excel 2003 in a workbook where there are 3-5
sheets completely filled with data, all 65536 rows. There are duplicates
scattered throughout the sheets. Is there a way I can link all the sheets
together so that when I do a sort, it will sort all the rows on each sheet
within the workbook?

You would need a macro to do that. This is an example of a Merge Sort
algorithm - you would need to sort each individual sheet, and then you
could look at the topmost item in each sheet and decide which record
should be written to a new sheet (and adjust a counter for the sheet
where that record lies). Then keep repeating this, looking at the
topmost item (as defined by the counters in each sheet), writing the
record to a new sheet and adjusting the appropriate counter. Another
check needs to be made to see how many records have been written to
the new sheet, so that a further new sheet can be used after 65536
records. It would be possible to remove duplicates as part of this
process.

You would end up with 3 - 5 sheets, where the first might cover A-E,
then F-L, then M-R etc.

I don't recall seeing examples of a merge sort algorithm being coded
on any of the usual web-sites.

Hope this helps.

Pete

On Jul 24, 12:56*pm, OfficeManager
<OfficeMana...@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:
> I am working with raw data in Excel 2003 in a workbook where there are 3-5
> sheets completely filled with data, all 65536 rows. *There are duplicates
> scattered throughout the sheets. *Is there a way I can link all the sheets
> together so that when I do a sort, it will sort all the rows on each sheet
> within the workbook?

As Pete said, you would need a good bit of code (programming) to do it all.
One suggestion I would give you is to find someone/computer that has Excel
2007. 2007 has over a million rows and could handle what you have easily by
putting everything on one sheet and then sorting that one sheet. It
wouldn't be a lot of work to then copy 3-5 batches of 65536 rows and paste
them into 3-5 sheets. Then delete the one sheet that has more than 65536
rows of data and save the file as a 2003 file. HTH Otto
"OfficeManager" <OfficeManager@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:D7A7DBC5-5D02-41BD-AC11-C0683405734E@microsoft.com...
>I am working with raw data in Excel 2003 in a workbook where there are 3-5
> sheets completely filled with data, all 65536 rows. There are duplicates
> scattered throughout the sheets. Is there a way I can link all the sheets
> together so that when I do a sort, it will sort all the rows on each sheet
> within the workbook?

OfficeManager wrote:
> I am working with raw data in Excel 2003 in a workbook where there are 3-5
> sheets completely filled with data, all 65536 rows. There are duplicates
> scattered throughout the sheets. Is there a way I can link all the sheets
> together so that when I do a sort, it will sort all the rows on each sheet
> within the workbook?

At the risk of being labeled a heretic, Excel isn't exactly the right
tool for this job (or this data). You could very quickly and easily
import all these worksheets into a single table in Access, and identify
your duplicates. This would be much faster, I might add, than finding
someone to code a VBA solution.

I you want to keep the data in Excel for some reason, you could easily
migrate the cleansed data back to Excel in manageable chunks.