I have been battling excel for a while now. If anyone has an answer to this I would greatly appreciate the help.

What I am looking to do is a complicated, at least for me, search and replace. I am looking to, row by row , find a 6-12 digit code located in column A and replace that information from a text in the corresponding column B of that line with an *. I need this process to repeat over thousands of lines. It can not alter the original code in column A. And as a kicker some of the codes that are in column A may or may not appear in the corresponding column B.

All of the codes in column A are unique, and will only appear in column B in the same line. So my best description of what I am looking to do is a line by line, search for the specific code in column A and replace with an * in column B.

A small sample of the spreadsheet I am trying to manipulate is below. For some reason I could not upload an excel doc.?? Consider part number column A and description column B in my scenario. Thank you in advance for taking a look at this. An answer or a point in the right direction will be amazing.

PART NUMBER - DESCRIPTION
CE271A - HP Color LaserJet CE271A Cyan Print Cartridge
CE272A - HP Color LaserJet CE272A Yellow Print Cartridge
CE273A - HP Color LaserJet CE273A Magenta Print Cartridge
CE278A - HP LaserJet P1566/P1606 Black Print Crtg HP Standard