Using fuzzy logic in excel
 

Hello everyone,

does anyone know of an application or vb code that can be
used to search in two worksheets (like VLOOKUP) on
similar matches using fuzzy logic? For example, if on
one sheet I have I.B.M and the other IBM or James Smith
on one and Jim Smith on the other, is there anyway of
giving confidence codes to the match?

Thanks very much for your help,

James

AFAIK this does require VBA code. I wrote an Access utility in VBA
that does exactly this cho it works by scrubbing punctuation out of
each list, then comparing each "word" ("Ed" and "Begley" and "Jr" are
each words in this context) in each entry in list A to each word in
each entry in list B. The output is an integer number corresponding to
the number of word matches found.

Hello James-

Based on the nature of your data, it could be possible that VLOOKUP uses
logic "fuzzy" enough as it is. If the lookup values include many similar
entries, though, that may not be the case.

Forgive me if you are already aware of this, but although the fx does look
for an exact match, but it uses the preceding row once it finds an item that
is "higher" than what it is looking for. The key is that the lookup table
must be sorted in ascending order based on the first column.

FWIW |:)
"James" wrote:

Hello everyone,

does anyone know of an application or vb code that can be
used to search in two worksheets (like VLOOKUP) on
similar matches using fuzzy logic? For example, if on
one sheet I have I.B.M and the other IBM or James Smith
on one and Jim Smith on the other, is there anyway of
giving confidence codes to the match?

Thanks very much for your help,

James

Thanks for your help.

James
-----Original Message-----
Hello James-

Based on the nature of your data, it could be possible
that VLOOKUP uses
logic "fuzzy" enough as it is. If the lookup values
include many similar
entries, though, that may not be the case.

Forgive me if you are already aware of this, but
although the fx does look
for an exact match, but it uses the preceding row once
it finds an item that
is "higher" than what it is looking for. The key is that
the lookup table
must be sorted in ascending order based on the first
column.

FWIW |:)
"James" wrote:

Hello everyone,

does anyone know of an application or vb code that can
be
used to search in two worksheets (like VLOOKUP) on
similar matches using fuzzy logic? For example, if on
one sheet I have I.B.M and the other IBM or James
Smith
on one and Jim Smith on the other, is there anyway of
giving confidence codes to the match?

Thanks very much for your help,

James

.

Hi Dave,

I don't seem to be a
-----Original Message-----
AFAIK this does require VBA code. I wrote an Access
utility in VBA
that does exactly this cho it works by scrubbing
punctuation out of
each list, then comparing each "word" ("Ed" and "Begley"
and "Jr" are
each words in this context) in each entry in list A to
each word in
each entry in list B. The output is an integer number
corresponding to
the number of word matches found.

.

Hi Dave,

I don't seem to be able to read your whole reply. Are
you able to share the access utility that you created?

Thanks,

James
-----Original Message-----
AFAIK this does require VBA code. I wrote an Access
utility in VBA
that does exactly this cho it works by scrubbing
punctuation out of
each list, then comparing each "word" ("Ed" and "Begley"
and "Jr" are
each words in this context) in each entry in list A to
each word in
each entry in list B. The output is an integer number
corresponding to
the number of word matches found.

.

James:
Let's take this offline: contact me at . I'm a bit
proprietary about applications I've written- but in the spirit of good
Netizenship I'll run the application against your data. If you'd like
me to do this, send lists A and B as text files to me at
. I'll send the results list back to you as text (or
as zipped text, since the file can be large).

Let me know-
Dave O

Google fudged my email address: it is
cyclezen at yahoo dot com