On Wed, 20 Jun 2007 13:04:08 -0700, Jonathan Horvath
wrote:

Hi Ron,

we're getting really close. the unique string can be anywhere in the
searched strings. however, the desired return may not contain something in
the unique string.

Col A desired return
william jones bill
bill smith bill
will robins bill
jon smith jon
d. robert burns rob
rob miller rob

so i need a translator in there as well, i could set up the "uniques" as you
suggest, but i'd need a second so that i would have

Col A uniques_ID uniques_return
william jones william bill
bill smith bill bill
will robins will bill
jon smith jon jon
d. robert burns robert rob
rob miller rob rob


so it would search Col A for the Uniques_ID string and if it finds it it
would then return the Uniques_return...

is that a possible variation on your suggestion?

Thanks!

That is pretty simple to do. You have your two columns of Uniques_ID and
Uniques_Return. You just need to return the value in the second column.

=IF(OR(ISNUMBER(FIND(Uniques_ID,A2))),
INDEX(uniques_return,MATCH(TRUE,(ISNUMBER(
FIND(Uniques_ID,A2))),0)),"")

(Array-entered as before).

You realize that since you are accepting finding the unique string anywhere in
the searched string, the following will occur, with "jon" as one of the
uniques:

michael jones -- jon





--ron