Find duplicate values in comma separated rows with random data - google-sheets

Question

Your assistance will be greatly appreciated as I have been struggling with this for a while and couldn't find a solution.
I have a Google Sheets file with comma-separated data in two columns as per the screenshot attached.
Screenshot of the two columns
text from the screenshot:
soon,son,so,on,no N/A
kind,kid,din,ink,kin,in dink
sing,sign,sin,gin,in,is gis,ins,sig,gins
farm,arm,ram,far,mar,am arf
may,yam,am,my N/A
tulip,lip,lit,pit,put,tip piu,pul,til,tui,tup,litu,ptui,puli,uplit
gift,it,if,fit,fig gif,git
hear,are,ear,hare,era,her hae,rah,rhea
dish,his,is,hi,hid dis,ids,sidh
trip,pit,rip,tip,it N/A
wife,few,if,we fie
thaw,what,hat,at haw,taw,twa,wat,wha
red,deer,reed ere,dee,ree,dere,dree,rede
as,save,vase,sea ave,sae,sev,vas,aves
from,for,form,of,or fro,mor,rom
won,now,on,own,no N/A
sport,port,spot,post,stop,sort,top,opt,pot,pro tor,sotrot,ops,tors,tops,trop,pots,opts,rots,pros,prost,strop,ports
I would love to have in another column a formula to show if in these two columns there are any duplicate values.
Thank you in advance for your help... it's been weeks without success haha

Answer 1

If you have Excel for Windows O365 with the UNIQUE and FILTERXML functions,
and if you mean to consider both columns together as if they were a single piece of data,
then try:
=UNIQUE(FILTERXML("<t><s>" & SUBSTITUTE(TEXTJOIN("</s><s>",TRUE,$A$1:$A$17,$B$1:$B$17),",","</s><s>") & "</s></t>","//s[.=following-sibling::*]"))
If that is not what you want, please clarify your question.

Answer 2

First place your data in columns A and B of an Excel worksheet. Then run this short VBA macro:
Sub report()
Dim rng As Range, r As Range, c As Collection, K As Long
Set rng = Range("A1:B17")
Set c = New Collection
K = 1
For Each r In rng
arr = Split(r.Value, ",")
For Each a In arr
On Error Resume Next
c.Add a, CStr(a)
If Err.Number <> 0 Then
Err.Number = 0
Cells(K, "C").Value = a
K = K + 1
End If
On Error GoTo 0
Next a
Next r
Range("C:C").RemoveDuplicates Columns:=1, Header:=xlNo
Set c = Nothing
End Sub
The duplicates appear in column C

Answer 3

What I have understood from your question: you want to find out if there are any words delimited by commas matching between the cells of two different columns.
For this solution I have used Apps Script. The following commented piece of code will find matching words between the two columns. Moreover, as the function used is an onEdit() trigger, it will automatically detect any changes done in either of these columns and automatically find out new matches or matches that are no longer there and update the value of cell C1:
function onEdit() {
// get current sheet
var sheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive().getActiveSheet();
// get values from our columns. This returns a 2D array that is flatten into a
// 1 D array to then convert it into a string where its elements are separated
// by a comma and white spaces are removed (so that a matches space + a for example)
var colA = sheet.getRange('A1:A2').getValues().flat().join().replace(/\s/g, '');
var colB = sheet.getRange('B1:B2').getValues().flat().join().replace(/\s/g, '');
// Create two arrays where each element is a word delimited by a comma in their original
// string
var ArrayA = colA.split(',');
var ArrayB = colB.split(',');
// find matches in these two arrays and return these matches
var matchingValues = ArrayA.filter(value => ArrayB.includes(value));
// set the value of C1 to the words that the filter has matched between our two columns
// join is used to display all the matching elements of the match array
sheet.getRange('C1').setValue(matchingValues.join());
}
Demo:
If you do not know how to open the script editor, you can access it on your Google Sheets menu bar under Tools-> Script editor.