Need help with queries

Copper Contributor
Hi, not sure where to start with this one - I have 1,000ish pdfs which I need to trawl for data. I can do this manually... but would like to automatically cut out much of what I don't need, and highlight parts I do need. Unfortunately I am not legally able to show the data for clarity.

I have a list of master data, i.e. customers and job numbers.

I am planning to dump pdf content in to excel.

1. If the job number is in a standard format, but muddled among other characters on an excel cell, how do I return the job number? With vlookup I am currently returning the value of the line with the partial match.
I.e. I'm looking for "X1????" And i just want to return "X1????" instead of "19F-X1????-CC9" or "AX1????-01".

2. Similarly, I want to search customer, by partial match of name or abbreviation buried in text, but only return the TLA.

3. I want to pull any row values, let's say over 20 characters, below cell with value "8. General Info" and above cell with value"9. Section Nine".

4. Let's say my values retuned at "3." go to column D, I also want B and C filled with the values at "1." and "2.".

On an aside, I should shortly have access to power query if that will help.

Hope this is somewhat clear - I'll try and knock up some dummy info if required.

Thanks in advance.
0 Replies