How to Consolidate Data from Multiple Excel Columns All into One Column

Question

Lets say I have an excel sheet with 4 columns of data & 20,000 rows of data in each column.

What is the most efficient way to get it so that I have all of that d

Answer 1

Save your workbook. If this code doesn't do what you want, the only way to go back is to close without saving and reopen.

Select the data you want to list in one column. Must be contiguous columns. May contain blank cells.

Press Alt+F11 to open the VBE

Press Control+R to view the Project Explorer

Navigate to the project for your workbook and choose Insert - Module

Paste this code in the code pane

Sub MakeOneColumn()

    Dim vaCells As Variant
    Dim vOutput() As Variant
    Dim i As Long, j As Long
    Dim lRow As Long

    If TypeName(Selection) = "Range" Then
        If Selection.Count > 1 Then
            If Selection.Count <= Selection.Parent.Rows.Count Then
                vaCells = Selection.Value

                ReDim vOutput(1 To UBound(vaCells, 1) * UBound(vaCells, 2), 1 To 1)

                For j = LBound(vaCells, 2) To UBound(vaCells, 2)
                    For i = LBound(vaCells, 1) To UBound(vaCells, 1)
                        If Len(vaCells(i, j)) > 0 Then
                            lRow = lRow + 1
                            vOutput(lRow, 1) = vaCells(i, j)
                        End If
                    Next i
                Next j

                Selection.ClearContents
                Selection.Cells(1).Resize(lRow).Value = vOutput
            End If
        End If
    End If

End Sub

Press F5 to run the code

Answer 2

You didn't mention if you are using Excel 2003 or 2007, but you may run into an issue with the # of rows in Excel 2003 being capped at 65,536. If you are using 2007, the limit is 1,048,576.

Also, can I ask what your end goal is for your analysis? If you need to perform many statistical calculations on your data, I would recommend moving out of the Excel environment into something that is more directly suited for data manipulation and analysis, such as R.

There are a variety of options for connecting R to Excel, including

1. RExcel
2. RODBC
3. Other options in the R manual

Regardless of what you choose to use to move data in/out of R, the code to change from wide to long format is pretty trivial. I enjoy the melt() function from the reshape package. That code would look like:

library(reshape)
#Fake data, 4 columns, 20k rows
df <- data.frame(foo = rnorm(20000)
    , bar = rlnorm(20000)
    , fee = rnorm(20000)
    , fie = rlnorm(20000)
)
#Create new object with 1 column, 80k rows
df.m <- melt(df)

From there, you can perform any number of statistical or graphing operations. If you use the RExcel plugin above, you can fire all of this up and run it within Excel itself. The R community is very active and can help address any and all questions you may encounter.

Good luck!

Answer 3

The formula

=OFFSET(Sheet1!$A$1,MOD(ROW()-1,COUNT(Sheet1!$A$1:$A$20000)),
    (ROW()-1)/COUNT(Sheet1!$A$1:$A$20000))

placed into each cell of your second workbook will retrieve the appropriate cell from the source sheet. No macros, simple copying from one sheet to another to reformat the results.

You will need to modify the ranges in the COUNT function to match the maximum number of rows in the source sheet. Adjust for column headers as required.

If you need something other than a 0 for empty cells, you may prefer to include a conditional.

A script to reformat the data may well be more efficient, but 20k rows is no longer a real limit in a modern Excel workbook.

Answer 4

Here is how you do it with some simple Excel formulae, and no fancy VBA needed. The trick is to use the OFFSET formula. Please see this example spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AuSyDFZlcRtHdGJOSnFwREotRzFfM28tWElpZ1FaR2c&usp=sharing#gid=0

Answer 5

Best and Simple solution to follow:

Select the range of the columns you want to be copied to single column

Copy the range of cells (multiple columns)

Open Notepad++

Paste the selected range of cells

Press Ctrl+H, replace \t by \n and click on replace all

all the multiple columns fall under one single column

now copy the same and paste in excel

Simple and effective solution for those who dont want to waste time coding in VBA

Answer 6

Take a look at Blockspring - you do need to install the plugin, but then it's just another function you call like this:

=BLOCKSPRING("twodee-array-reduce","input_array",D5:F7)

The source code and other details are here. If this doesn't suit and/or you want to build off my solution, you can fork my function (Python) or use another supported scripting language (Ruby, R, JS, etc...).