Compare Two Data Files
 

I'm having dfficulty comparing imported data from two files. One was
imported from a text file and is not imported in number which can be fixed.
The more difficult issue is that there is a blank space in some of these at
the front that causes errors using vlookup or index. Are there any other
functions that can ignore those differences?

TRIM removes leading, trailing or extra spaces so you can just wrap the
cells in TRIM like

=VLOOKUP(TRIM(A1),TRIM(B2:C200),2,0)

entered with ctrl + shift & enter

I didn't know if the spaces were in lookup value or table thus 2 TRIM, I
guess it's probably the table

Regards,

Peo Sjoblom


"matthews_jd" wrote in message
...
I'm having dfficulty comparing imported data from two files. One was
imported from a text file and is not imported in number which can be
fixed.
The more difficult issue is that there is a blank space in some of these
at
the front that causes errors using vlookup or index. Are there any other
functions that can ignore those differences?

Can you use trim function to remove leading and trailing blank?

If you want to use it on say a column of text values lying in A1 to A10 then
in B1 you will enter the formula =trim(A1) and copy the formula down through
to B10.
Then highlight B1 to B10 and do Edit/Copy and then place your cursor on A1
and do Edit/Pastespecial/Values. At this stage the trimmed values are in your
original range A1:A10. Now you can delete the range B1 to B10.

Alok

"matthews_jd" wrote:

I'm having dfficulty comparing imported data from two files. One was
imported from a text file and is not imported in number which can be fixed.
The more difficult issue is that there is a blank space in some of these at
the front that causes errors using vlookup or index. Are there any other
functions that can ignore those differences?