Question

What is an efficient way to find values in a range, eg Range(“A1:A2”), that exist in the same order within a second range, eg Range(“B:B”).

My seach has only come up with two possibilities so far:
1) Using a loop to iterate through the second range.
2) Using Range(“B:B”).Find to search for the value in “A1” and then testing for the value of A2 in the consecutive cell. Values in Range(“B:B”) is not unique so need to to keep finding until nothing found.

Is there another option I haven’t considered?

Answer 1

While (2) sounds sensible, another quick way would be to concatenate B1 and B2 into a single cell in a working column ( manually or with VBA), repeating for B2 & B3 Etc, and then match the combined string in a single lookup

[Update]

You could use a working column like so. The || concatenator is used to avoid false matches, an error check handles the no match situation

Sub ConCatMatch()
    Dim rng1 As Range
    Dim X
    Set rng1 = Range([b1], Cells(Rows.Count, "B").End(xlUp))
    rng1.Offset(0, 1).Columns.Insert
    With rng1.Offset(0, 1)
        .FormulaR1C1 = "=RC[-1]&""||""&R[1]C[-1]"
        X = .Value2
        .EntireColumn.Delete
    End With
    If IsError(Application.Match([a1].Value & "||" & [a2].Value, X, 0)) Then
        MsgBox "No match", vbCritical
    Else
        MsgBox "Match starting at " & rng1.Cells(1).Offset(Application.Match([a1].Value & "||" & [a2].Value, X, 0) - 1, 0).Address(0, 0)
    End If
End Sub