how to: find matching names in different columns in an OpenOffice Calc spreadsheet?

Question

I have a spreadsheet that has 5 columns, each column holds a full name (First Middle Last) in each cell. How can I produce a report showing which names are shared between which columns, for example, Report: John Brown is in columns A,D,E James Kennedy is in columns B,E etc And just in case it matters to you, the different columns have different numbers of cells, one may have 50, another 700 etc.

I was looking at an example here showing how to do something a little similar with numeric data using countif but I don't really understand it or how if could apply to what I'm doing. Thanks

Answer 1

Not sure if this is what you want.... Here, I check in column E if the value of THAT row in column B does exist in column A, then in column F, I check if the value of that row of column C exists in the list in column A. Since I use a European setting, the parameter separator, which normally is a comma (,), is replaced by a semi-column (;) in my example... As you can see there are some issues with finding 10, 11, etc. With normal names that should not be an issue.