Outputting rows into another sheet - vba

Question

I have two sets of data stored in two different sheets. I need to run an analysis which prints out the non-duplicate rows (i.e. row is present in one and not the other) found in the sheets and print them in a new sheet.
I can do the comparison fine - it is relatively simple with ranges and the For Next method. I currently store the non-duplicates in two different collections, each representing the non-duplicates in each sheet. However I am having trouble deciding how to proceed with pasting the duplicate rows on the new sheet.
I thought about storing the entire row into a collection but printing the row out of the collection in the new sheet seems non-trivial: I would have to determine the size of the collection, set the appropriate range and then iterate through the collection and print them out. I would also like to truncate this data which would add another layer of complexity.
The other method I thought was simply storing the row number and using Range.Select.Copy and PasteSpecial. The advantage of this is that I can truncate however much I wish, however this seems incredibly hacky to me (essentially using VBA to simulate user input) and I am not sure on performance hits.
What are the relative merits or is there a better way?

Answer 1

I have been tackling a similar problem at work this week. I have come up with two methods:
First you could simply iterate through each collection one row at a time, and copy the values to the new sheet:
Function PasteRows1(ByRef srcRows As Collection, ByRef dst As Worksheet)
Dim row As Range
Dim curRow As Integer
curRow = 1
For Each row In srcRows
dst.rows(curRow).Value = row.Value
curRow = curRow + 1
Next
End Function
This has the benefit of not using the Range.Copy method and so the user's clipboard is preserved. If you are not copying an entire row then you will have to create a range that starts at the first cell of the row and then resize it using Range.Resize. So the code inside the for loop would roughly be:
Dim firstCellInRow as Range
Set firstCellInRow = dst.Cells(curRow,1)
firstCellInRow.Resize(1,Row.columns.Count).Value = row.Value
curRow = curRow + 1
The second method I thought of uses the Range.Copy. Like so:
Function PasteRows2(ByRef srcRows As Collection, ByRef dst As Worksheet)
Dim row As Range
Dim disjointRange As Range
For Each row In srcRows
If disjointRange is Nothing Then
Set disjointRange = row
Else
Set disjointRange = Union(disjointRange, row)
End If
Next
disjointRange.Copy
dst.Paste
End Function
While this does use the .Copy method it also will allow you to copy all of the rows in one shot which is nice because you will avoid partial copies if excel ever crashes in the middle of your macro.
Let me know if either of these methods satisfy your needs :)