Highlight or Conditional Format SIMILAR matches within the same column

Copper Contributor

I am trying to find a way to highlight SIMILAR matches to values within one column. I have found some helpful tips on comparing TWO datasets with similar matches found, but not anything that looks within it's own column to find a similar match. We have customers from a lead source that may have duplicate listings with similar, but not exact name matches, i.e.

 

"Test ABC"

"Test ABC, Inc"

"Test ABC Inc"

 

Is there any formula that can see these similarities within the same column, and highlight them?

6 Replies

@Sergei Baklan  Thanks! I did look into that and tried to see if that would work for this project - it is great for comparing two datasets, but that is where I am stuck. I have one dataset that I want to somehow find duplicates within.

@KLoveall did ypu ever get a solution to this? I have the same problem you described and fuzzy lookuup isn't helping me. Please let me know if you managed to resolve this for finding 'similar-but-not-exact' matches within the same column. Thanks!

@SteveMM No, I ended up installing a 3rd party add-in called "Ablebits" - you can google them to find them. They have some really cool fuzzy lookup tools, but nothing that I know of yet built into MS unfortunately.

@KLoveall thanks for your response. In the meantime, I found this article with a formular that came closest but not quite to what I was looking for. It helped me some but I'll look into your suggestion on "Ablebits" as well. 

If you have access to LAMBDA, one approach might be using SCAN. You'd string-out the lookup value to make it an array then SCAN it. Feed the results to XMATCH but only accept hits if the element from the array is 90% as long as the total length (This can be adjusted). I may post a sample later, time permitting.