Oct 23 2021 05:51 AM - edited Oct 23 2021 05:59 AM
Background: I'm trying to make a program for combining two tables based off of unique/similar names. Because these tables come from two different sources, the names may or may not be an exact match (e.g. "Dave Beck" and "David Beck"). The goal is to have a system that creates a new table (Unique Names) and then does the following things:
Problem: However, I can't even make it past step 1 and I've been at this for hours. I've looked up everything I could thing of. Lookup functions can't return approximate matches, and neither can the Index/Match combo. The fuzzy lookup add-in doesn't actually return any values without an unreasonable amount of work for this task and so can't be used for checking each name individually.
There has to be some way to just simply check if a certain name has any approximate (not partial) matches or not. There's an over-the-top add-in that does it, so there's got to be some method of accomplishing this task. Any help or guidance would be much appreciated as I am at my wits end as to how to do this. Thanks in advance!
Oct 24 2021 07:45 AM
You're at your wits end trying to figure out a complicated solution, then ask for help but did not share a sample data set? Normally in this and other communities problem solver like to solve puzzles just like a crossword puzzle, without the actual puzzle, problem solvers open this post because it sounds intriguing but there's no puzzle to solve (data set) so they just close the window and move on to the next puzzle.