Some of excel's functions support wildcards.

The asterisk (*) represent any set of characters.

You could also use a question mark (?) that would represent a single character.

bduncan wrote:

Thanks for the formual that is what I needed. What does the &"*" mean. I'm
guessing it has something to do with only matching part of the cell?

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

That means that there isn't an exact match.

This fuzzy matching could be difficult to implement.

Any chance you could just take the first few characters (say 15 characters) and
match on that?

=vlookup(left(h3,15)&"*",costs,2,false)



bduncan wrote:

Thanks for the response. I tried that first and got n/a#. Even made sure to
format columns as text.

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

Since you're matching on text, I bet you want an exact match.

Try:

=vlookup(h3, costs,2,False)

That 4th parm (false) specifies that you want an exact match.

bduncan wrote:

Why is my vlookup formula returning the number in the row above what it
should be? My sheet looks like this;
H K
39265 CLAMP, RAIL SPLICE =vlookup(h3, costs,2).

sheet 2
C D
39265 CAM LINKS 2 POSTION FOR FR150 $150
39265 CAM LINKS PREFORM INSERT HOLDE $700
39265 CLAMP, RAIL SPLICE, 3" $32.24

My formula keeps returning $700 instead of the $32.24. If I delete the $700
it returns $150. I've had the issue before where my cell range is wrong but
this time I haven't been able to figure it out.

--

Dave Peterson


--

Dave Peterson


--

Dave Peterson