Compare two lists to find missing items
Find values present in the first list but absent from the second, keeping text codes and the original order.
Choose which list to check
Put the full list you expect to have in the first box. Put the list you actually have in the second. Select only-first to return items that appear in the first box and are absent from the second.
Read the worked example
The first list contains codes 001, 002, 003 and 004, with 001 repeated. The second contains 002, 004 and 005. The result is 001 followed by 003. Code 005 is not shown because this direction checks what is missing from the second list.
Control spaces, case and repeated values
The example trims outer spaces and compares letter case exactly. Turn off trimming when spaces are part of an identifier, or enable the case option when your task treats upper and lower case as equivalent. Each missing value appears once, in first-list order; leading zeros stay intact.
Choose the next comparison
Select only-second to check the other direction, or symmetric-difference to find values appearing in either list but not both. This is a membership comparison, not a count of repeated occurrences. To compare prices or other columns for matching IDs, use a table join or structured comparison instead.
Reviewed 2026-09-13. Open List comparer with all settings.