Have you ever found yourself caught in a maze of UK postcode list excel and had no idea where to start? You are not alone. These alphanumeric problems can make you feel like you’re trying to solve Rubik’s Cubes blindfolded. Do not worry! Excel can save the day!
Imagine this: you have a long list of addresses, longer than your arm. You need to sort the addresses by postcode. It’s as easy as watching paint dry. Excel is like a Swiss Army Knife for data management.
Let’s start by importing the postcode list you have into Excel. Simple as pie! Open Excel, select the file, click ‘File,’ then ‘Open,’ and you’re done. Voila! You now have your data in front of you and ready to be transformed.
Sorting out those postcodes may seem like climbing Everest with no oxygen. It’s actually easier than you might think. Select the column that contains your postcodes and click on the Data tab. Then, select ‘Sort from A to Z. Boom! Now you can easily find your postcodes.
There’s still more! What if you want to exclude certain areas? You may only be interested in London’s postcodes that begin with “E”. It’s as easy as lemon squeezy. Type “E*” into the search box after clicking on the filter icon in your column of postcodes. Presto! Presto!
We’ll spice it up with conditional formatting. Imagine you want to highlight all Manchester’s postcodes that begin with “M”. Choose your postcode column. Go to ‘Conditional formatting’ under ‘Home tab’. Select ‘New Rule,’ then ‘Use formula’. Enter =LEFT(A1,1)=”M”. (A1 should be your first postcode). Select a color and click OK. All Manchester codes will now glow like Christmas trees.
Got duplicates? You can do it! Choose your column once more and then click on ‘Data Tools.’ This is located under the tab ‘Data. Click on “Remove duplicates”. Click on ‘Remove Duplicates’.
Who doesn’t love pivot tables? They’re great for quickly summarizing large data sets. Insert one using ‘Insert > PivotTable. Drag the postcode field to both the Rows and Values box for a quick counting of all codes.
VLOOKUP is a powerful tool that’s so useful, it’s almost criminal to not use it. You have a sheet that lists regions for each prefix of a postcode. Now you want to add this information next to every address on your main sheet. Use VLOOKUP like so: =VLOOKUP(LEFT(A2,2),Sheet2!A:B,2,FALSE). This formula compares the first two characters in each Sheet1 postcode (starting at cell A2) with Sheet2’s A:B range and returns matching names from column B.
You can also map these postcodes by using Excel’s 3D Maps under the ‘Insert” menu. Visualize geographic data without breaking a sweat.
Excel is your guide to taming UK Postcodes! It’s faster to sort, filter or map out regions visually than you can say Bob’s your Uncle.