extract a list of "deltas" from two lists of textstrings

RobTang

Honest forget any sort of spreadsheet software its not designed for this and there are perfectly good programs that will do the job for you.

If its only a one off job use Beyond Compare 30 day trial, its worth buying if you need its functionally regularly
https://www.scootersoftware.com/

If you need something longer try tortoise merge or meld or kdiff
https://tortoisesvn.net/TortoiseMerge.html
or
http://meldmerge.org/
or
http://kdiff3.sourceforge.net/

There are some purely online tools as well just search for file diff

Cornucopia

RobTang wrote: »

Honest forget any sort of spreadsheet software its not designed for this and there are perfectly good programs that will do the job for you.

Spreadsheets are one of the few genuinely accessible, genuinely multi-purpose tools available after 3 decades of personal computing. Depressing, but it is what it is.

The OP didn't say what volume of data s/he was dealing with. I would say that all the Spreadsheets would cope perfectly well with 100s of data items, and PC-based ones with 1000s. Only above that level might you need to look at other solutions.

This being MSE, I would certainly encourage people to make use of free tools wherever feasible.

that

Think this would work too, but you would have to control-select after to remove the unwanted
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/use-diff-notepad-44587.html

that

in Libre office Calc,

paste list2 into column A
paste list1 into column B
in C1 type the formula =VLOOKUP(A1,$B$1:$B$13,1,0) and replicate this down. This will show the letter if it exists, and #N/A if it does not,

Now you want to sort the table by #N/A to find the letters you want

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
the easiest, using Tigsteroonies method

combine both lists like into column A
a
b
c
d
e
f
g
h
i
j
k
l
m
a
d
e
f
j
k
l

Select the whole A Column > Sheet > Named Ranges and Expressions > Define call it zx
select column b1 Data > Pivot Table > Create > Named Range: zx. OK on current selected field (the number list)
drag the item listed in Available Fields (Mine is called a) field to both Row Fields and Data Fields.
In Data Fields double click on a select the Function as count, press OK

the items that have a count as 1 are unique

Sort by column B