thanks to all who haved responded so quickly... i used "bill, rob, joe" etc
for simplification however the cellc i'm searching on contain more complex
entries. so perhaps something a bit more complex would help.

col A desired return
bill jones bill
bill johnson bill
robert smith rob
rob allen rob
jon jones jon
jonathan smith jon
jonny carson jon


etc... there are probably 10 different, but unique, strings i'd be searching
for within a very long list (over 2,000 items) that have over 75 different
variations of those 10 unique strings

thanks again,

Jonathan