Merging customer names?

Copper Contributor

Hi all,

 

I have a huge data sheet with sales numbers that we get from one of our customers/wholesalers every quartal. I use this data to create a pivot table that is easy to use for our sales reps within the company.

 

The issue that I have, is that a lot of these customers have different customer names in the original data. They have the same customer number in one column, but they can have 1,2,3,4 or even more different customer names. Now this makes it difficult for the sales reps to get an overview since the same customer can appear on several different rows in the pivot. We could, theoretically, use the customer number instead of name in the pivot, but it would be nearly impossible to keep track of all these thousands of customers.

 

So my question is: is there any way for me to rename the customers in the original data sheet so that they only have ONE name? It doesn't really matter which one of the names they take, as long as they only have ONE.

 

I hope I am clear enough. If not, do not hestitate to ask me to develop further.

 

Thanks!

1 Reply

@oakesson , you may add helper column to your source data, for this simple model

image.png

in C2 is

=INDEX($B:$B,MATCH($A2,$A:$A,0))

and drag it down (or use Ctrl+D) till end of the range. Formula returns first found name for the current customer number. You may use that column for the pivoting, but with source table sorting names could be changed. Or copy helper column and paste as values into main one.