4 column sorts

[ricer]

I am using Excel to do data conversion on sales history files. To do this, I need to convert a single flat table into 4 seperate tables. I am using VB to do this. On one operation, I have to roll up common items so that duplicate key errors can be avoided, but Excel will only allow the sort using 3 columns and I need to sort on 4 columns to ensure that unique entries are grouped. If I just read through all records to find duplicates (there are almost 115 thousand of them) I will tie up the network resources and it will take all night. Any suggestion?

[Div]

Convert into one huge table in your RDBMS. Then do SQL selects into a new table with nested selects if necessary to achieve your new tables. I REALLY don't recommend doing it in Excel unless you have to.

Using nested selects should prevent tying up network bandwidth. It might suck up the CPU on that server, but I doubt it.