[Kevy Baby]

Okay, these two questions are a little different: is there a better way to accomplish the two tasks below?

1. Get a list of all entries in a column (in other words, if I have 50,000 records and column H has a listing by state, I want a list of the states covered in this list [obviously not all 50 states]).

1. Sort by Column H
2. Highlight Column H and use the Count Subtotal (Data > Subtotals).
3. Click on the "2" in the upper left corner to collapse the selection to just the counts (when you use the Count Subtotal, a small "1", "2", and "3" appear in the upper left corner of the sheet - this may have a name, but I don't know what that name is).
4. Highlight all of the Count Summary Sub-heads (again, this may have a name, but I am not sure what it is: it is the titles that appear in a new column that is created when the "Sub Total by Count" is run).
5. Select just the visible cells in that column (alt-;) and copy. Be sure to not select the last entry, which is the "Grand Count".
6. In a separate worksheet (or somewhere else), Edit > Paste Special > Values. Highlight all of those cells and using the Edit > Replace command, get rid of " Count" from each entry

2. Create a list of records with birthdays in a certain month (in this case, April).

1. Convert the Birth Date column to text. Note that this data came to me with the date already in a text format listed at YYYYMMDD (no dashes or slashes).
2. Create two new columns. In the first column, use the RIGHT function to reduce the date down to just the month and year (the last four characters): =LEFT(G2,4). In the second column, use the LEFT function to reduce the date down to just the month: =RIGHT(H2,2).
3. Copy/paste special this last column as values and then convert Text to Numbers. This leaves with numerical data of 1-12 in this column.
4. Auto-Filter the spreadsheet and then select for this column any number that isn't a 4.
5. Select all of the numbers remaining visible in this column (everything but the 4's) and then highlight only the visibles (alt-;). Delete (with the only option being the entire rows.
6. Under the Data > Filter menu, choose "Show All"