Hoping you can help. I understand the use of Data Validation and how,
through formulas like Exact, I can check one cell against another cell
to confirm cells are exactly the same however I can't seem to find
reference on how to do the following.

I need to validate that names are entered correctly in a spreadsheet
which is reflecting our active directory machine name structure.
Machine names have the following breakdown:
- First 2 characters indicate the country
- Second 2 characters indicate the location
- Third 2 characters should always be "OV"
- Next 5 characters would be our contact
- Final 4 characters should be numeric.

So for example. In a worksheet I will have thousands of records that
contain entries such as:
A1 = UKMAOVExcel0001 (UK = Country, MA = Manchester, "OV", Excel =
Contact and then 4 digits).

For the country, location and contact the valid entries are stored in
a separate worksheet ("Naming"). So for example I could validate that
the machine name in A1 is correct by something like:
=VLOOKUP(LEFT(A1,2),'Naming'!A1:A800,1,FALSE) which would show me the
country and present #N/A if a invalid country has been selectedb but
how can I do this based on all of the criteria above?

Appreciate your help on this.

Thanks in advance, Al