How to compare two sets of query results

One query answers one question, but some questions need two. Who’s on the newsletter list but hasn’t given consent? Who came to the course and also signed up to serve? By saving the results of two queries and comparing them, you can answer questions like these without exporting anything to a spreadsheet.

Comparing two result sets

1. Run your first query, then open ‘Tasks’ on the results and choose ‘Save these results’. Give the set a name that will make sense later, and save it into a group if colleagues should be able to use it too.
2. Run your second query and save its results the same way.
3. Open one of your saved result sets and choose ‘Compare these results with another result set’.
4. Pick the other saved set, then choose the comparison you want: everyone who’s in either set (one combined list), only the people who appear in both sets, or the people in one set but not the other.
5. The comparison produces a new set of results, and it works like any other: you can mail everyone in it, export it, or save it to compare against something else.

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Good to know

• If Venn diagrams ever made sense to you, this is exactly that: the overlap, the whole, or one circle minus the other.
• ‘In one set but not the other’ depends on which set you start from, so it’s worth a glance at the numbers to check you subtracted the right way round.
• After a comparison, check your columns before exporting; the combined list may start from the default layout rather than the one you set on the original queries.
• Comparing is read-only, so you can experiment freely; nothing changes for anyone until you run a task on the results. There’s a tour of those in what you can do with query results.