excel delete row if column contains value from to-remove-list

I've found a more reliable method (at least on Excel 2016 for Mac) is:

Assuming your long list is in column A, and the list of things to be removed from this is in column B, then paste this into all the rows of column C:

= IF(COUNTIF($B$2:$B$99999,A2)>0,"Delete","Keep")

Then just sort the list by column C to find what you have to delete.


Given sheet 2:

ColumnA
-------
apple
orange

You can flag the rows in sheet 1 where a value exists in sheet 2:

ColumnA  ColumnB
-------  --------------
pear     =IF(ISERROR(VLOOKUP(A1,Sheet2!A:A,1,FALSE)),"Keep","Delete")
apple    =IF(ISERROR(VLOOKUP(A2,Sheet2!A:A,1,FALSE)),"Keep","Delete")
cherry   =IF(ISERROR(VLOOKUP(A3,Sheet2!A:A,1,FALSE)),"Keep","Delete")
orange   =IF(ISERROR(VLOOKUP(A4,Sheet2!A:A,1,FALSE)),"Keep","Delete")
plum     =IF(ISERROR(VLOOKUP(A5,Sheet2!A:A,1,FALSE)),"Keep","Delete")

The resulting data looks like this:

ColumnA  ColumnB
-------  --------------
pear     Keep
apple    Delete
cherry   Keep
orange   Delete
plum     Keep

You can then easily filter or sort sheet 1 and delete the rows flagged with 'Delete'.