Hmmm . . . maybe I am doing something wrong, but this formula seems to find
the last 2 characters that match regardless of whether any of the preceeding
ones match. In one of the ones I tested, two text strings both had an "s" in
position 87, although none of the preceeding words or characters matched. I
need to determine the position where every preceeding character matched, but
the remaining ones do not. Sorry if I am doing something wrong, or if my
original explanation was unclear.

"David Billigmeier" wrote:

This one will work... it's a long one. It will output the position of the
last 2 characters that match. It assumes the "first" string is in A1 and the
"second" is in A2. To finally get the percentage value divide the whole
thing by LEN(A1). Also, make sure to commit it with CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER:

=MAX(ROW(INDIRECT("1:"&MAX(LEN(A1),LEN(A2))))*(MID (A1,ROW(INDIRECT("1:"&MAX(LEN(A1),LEN(A2)))),1)=MI D(A2,ROW(INDIRECT("1:"&MAX(LEN(A1),LEN(A2)))),1)))

--
Regards,
Dave


"andy62" wrote:

I am wondering if there is any trick for identifying how much of a match two
text strings are? In my case, the two strings would start the same, but then
differ somewhere in the middle or the end. If I could identify the character
position where the difference occurs that would help me - and then maybe
divide that number by the length in characters of the first string to get a
percentage.

TIA