Excel macro - keeping lines with highest priority weight - vba

Question

I have an excel document that has the following column data:
Country,AnimalName,Year,ResultsQuality(1-6),ResultA,ResultB,ResultC.....ResultZ
ResultQuality is an indicator of how accurate the result in the line (ResultA-ResultZ), the highest quality is ResultsQuality=1, the lesser quality level is ResultsQuality=6.
Here is some rows examples:
row#1: US,Camel,1985,2,111,222,333.....999
row#2: US,Camel,1985,5,114,227,338.....958
row#3: CANADA,Camel,1985,3,214,257,638.....858
row#4: CANADA,Shark,1985,1,14,27,38.....8
row#5: CANADA,Shark,1985,2,14,257,3.....628
row#6: CANADA,Shark,1985,4,14,25,63.....568
row#7: CANADA,Shark,1985,6,14,25,6.....838
As you see, the [Country,AnimalName,Year] key can contain one or more lines that has different resultQuality in it.
The macro should:
Go through all the lines, and for each [Country,AnimalName,Year] key - keep the highest quality results line. The other less quality rows for that [Country,AnimalName,Year] should be removed.
After running the macro on the 3 rows above - the results should be:
row#1: US,Camel,1985,2,111,222,333.....999
row#2: CANADA,Camel,1985,3,214,257,638.....858
row#3: CANADA,Shark,1985,1,14,27,38.....8
Thanks allot!

Answer 1

This can actually be accomplished without declaring a single variable. Removing duplicates works from the bottom to the top so if the data is correctly sorted and the appropriate columns supplied to determine duplication, the operation should be dead easy.
Sub Highest_Priority_Weight()
With ActiveSheet.Cells(1, 1).CurrentRegion
'this method can only use three key columns on a sort so we do it twice
.Cells.Sort Key1:=.Columns(4), Order1:=xlAscending, _
Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, Header:=xlYes
.Cells.Sort Key1:=.Columns(1), Order1:=xlAscending, _
Key2:=.Columns(2), Order2:=xlAscending, _
Key3:=.Columns(3), Order3:=xlAscending, _
Orientation:=xlTopToBottom, Header:=xlYes
'now that the best are at the top, dedupe to clear all others
.RemoveDuplicates Columns:=Array(1, 2, 3), Header:=xlYes
End With
End Sub
That should turn this,
    
.. into something like this,
    
For Excel, that's the quickest way I know of. A subsequent sorting routine could be added after the .RemoveDuplicates operation if you prefer some other displayed format.