Excel formulas

kanezfankanezfan sunny south florida Icrontian
edited April 2004 in Science & Tech
OK, ever since I got into the real estate profession, I find myself making a lot of phone calls. I have to make sure I don't call anyone who is on the do not call registry though, so this where I need your help. I try to call about 100 people a day, I'll pick a neighborhood and just call every house, but first I make sure to run each number against the do not call registry in my area code. I do this manually because I have no idea how to automate it. The do not call list for my area code is huge, MS Word counted 400,357 lines, and there's one phone number per line. That's almost a half a million phone numbers :wtf: What I'm doing right now is for every 100 phone numbers I look up, I do a search on each one individually and if Word finds it on the list, I cross it off my sheet of paper. Now I know there has to be a way to do this automatically with Excel probably, or even Access, so will one of you programming types please help me to do this in a more efficient way? Basically I need to run one set of numbers against another set of numbers and if there's a match, I need the number flagged or removed from the smaller list. I know this has to be really easy.

PS, let me know if you want to buy or sell a house in Florida :bigggrin:

Comments

  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited March 2004
    I don't know about access/excel, but you could write a C program to do it...
  • kanezfankanezfan sunny south florida Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    the key word there is I "could" but you see I can't, since I don't know C. But if you know C, could you write it for me?
  • dodododo Landisville, PA
    edited March 2004
    where do you get the phone numbers to call? an access database or something?

    ~dodo
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited March 2004
    Me and my big mouth. :rolleyes:;D;D

    I can give it a shot. I'm on spring break at the moment, I have nothing better to do until I have the house to myself tomorrow, when I can start cleaning my room.

    My C programming... sucks ass tho. But I'll try. :)
  • kanezfankanezfan sunny south florida Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    no, through the multiple listing service, i can pull up all the tax records (public info) for all the houses in a given neighborhood. the tax records usually contain the phone number for the owner of the house. I then export that to a comma delimited file.
  • kanezfankanezfan sunny south florida Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    geeky it's cool lol. I just figured there has to be an easy way to say "compare these two lists, then if a number on list A is on list A, trash it, then give me the leftovers on list A."
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    spamming bastard! you telemarketer! scum! ;D
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited March 2004
    Heh, it's no big deal. I'll give it a shot.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    Um, with a database, this is a three-step normally. FIRST, you gen a match table by comparing and looking for matches and gen a table with just those entries in it. THEN, you apply a delete against the table you are planning on using to update with the master table that you keep left alone. THEN, you apply what is left of the update table to the master, as a file merge (logically, in DB parlance, this is a JOIN, and if you were really good with SQL and had record dates as part of record so you knew timeliness of data and deleted OLDEST stuff, you could use a relational DB to gen an update table automatically, as a query result written to a file, then you use THAT file to update with).

    Geeky could probably do it in C, and Excell can find matches for you and then let you delete first found or second found by simply merging in, then using find to find duplicates, then delete ROW that has duplicates in it. I do not know that Excel can yet do a column compare, gen a sheet with just the results of teh match on phone number (AND, if you have an old phone number entry you might get wrong on deleted if you try to automate this in Excel, be better to do it with a relational DB or a DBIII table setup--scrap the Excel idea, please-- you would end up culling and redoing things by hand some).

    John D.
  • kanezfankanezfan sunny south florida Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    primesuspect wrote:
    spamming bastard! you telemarketer! scum! ;D

    [blast from the past=on]It was you allright!!! I learned it by watching you!![/blast from the past]
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    Now wait a second, I host with Prime, very little spam here even on my site email... :D

    John D.
  • a2jfreaka2jfreak Houston, TX Member
    edited March 2004
    If you still need help shoot me a PM, kanez.
  • kanezfankanezfan sunny south florida Icrontian
    edited March 2004
    please help, please! Seriously, I could really use your help. help your favorite liberal :D
  • Geeky1Geeky1 University of the Pacific (Stockton, CA, USA)
    edited March 2004
    "favorite liberal"

    Invalid data type for name "liberal".

    *geeky BSODs*

    ;D
  • a2jfreaka2jfreak Houston, TX Member
    edited April 2004
    Shoot me a PM w/ the data file and tell me exactly what you're wanting and I'll see what I can do for you.

    Just remember, come November, not to shoot your favorite Conservative in the foot :)
    kanezfan wrote:
    please help, please! Seriously, I could really use your help. help your favorite liberal :D
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