computer/programming/excel wizards! help an idiot!

My biggest gripe with Excel is that I have to use the F2 key to get to the formula bar. Like, who the hell finds it comfortable to use the Function keys?!

That’s actually quicker than what I do. I always use the mouse to click in the formula bar. I’ll have to remember F2.

OK, I have a problem that's been driving me nuts for a while. I have two columns of data, and the rows are groups. It's like this:

Col A. Col B.
person 1 | keyword 1
person 1 | keyword 2
person 1 | keyword 3
person 2 | keyword 1
person 3 | keyword 1
person 3 | keyword 3

I want to eliminate the duplicate rows and put each value in column 2 in it's own column, like this:

Person 1 | keyword 1 | keyword 2 | keyword 3
Person 2 | keyword 1 | |
Person 3 | keyword 1 | keyword 3 |

There's too much data for me to just copy/paste groups of rows and transpose them.

I've tried a pivot table, but that doesn't get me the result I need. It puts all the values of column B into a single row of labels at the top. I've tried various arcane formulae, but nothing seems to work.

fffffffffuuuuuuuuuccccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkk

Some clever solutions here: superuser.com/questions/453041

the excel answers I’m getting from google are bad but what you’re looking for is denormalizing into lists

or? if you search for 'vlookup that returns multiple values' there are some different methods that returns exact match results in its own cell.

'vlookup that returns multiple values' was definitely the right thing to search! Many thanks, Yerac. Tinkering with the formula here did the trick.

Good!

oh was going to suggest INDEX but couldn't remember the exact way I used it