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Posted to microsoft.public.excel.worksheet.functions
Ted Metro
 
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Default Finding duplicates

I have a large customer list and am looking for duplicates that may be a
variant spelling.

So assume I have two lists like this starting in A1

Cattail Supply
Dogwood Rentals
Tigerland Farms

Dogwood Inc.
Dove Ltd.

With the second list in B5 I'd like a formula that would take the first 4
letters of A5 and see if there is a name in a1:a3 that has that string of 4
letters anywhere in the name, and if so populate a 1.

For an exact match I can do something like isna(match(a5,a1:a3,false)) and I
could surely change a5 to left(a5,4), but I can figure out how to write the
forumla to look for those 4 letters anywhere in the name, instead of an exact
match.