On Jan 13, 12:45*pm, "Pete_UK" wrote:
You said that column A contains Last_name, First_name - are you now saying
that it contains the data as First_name, Last_name ? That is what you imply
in saying that it is only matching with first names. Try this variation of
the formula:

=IF(B2="","",IF(COUNTIF(A$2:A$25,"*"&B2)0,"X","") )

Note that I've moved the wildcard character.

Hope this helps.

Pete

wrote in message

...

Thanks Pete. Using this, I only appear to be matching up with first
names. i.e. last name column = James, is being coded as a match
because there are some first names listed as James. this is fine,
however it's not locating any of the last names.

Sorry Pete. This seems to work. I will test to make sure. Thanks for
your help - I really appreciate it.

Mark