Excel 2024: Use Fuzzy Match in Power Query

November 18, 2024 - by Bill Jelen

There's a research and development team at Microsoft known as Microsoft Labs. Almost 10 years ago, it invented a free Fuzzy Match add-in for Excel. A fuzzy matching algorithm looks for words that share a percentage of characters in common.

The figure below shows two data sets that need to be matched. Columns A and B contain the list of employees. Columns D and E contain the names of the employees who filled out a required form. You need to identify the people who haven't yet returned the form. Unfortunately, a VLOOKUP or XLOOKUP won't work since column A uses a 'last name, first name' format while column D contains a nickname and last name. These two data sets can be matched using the Fuzzy Match tool that's now built into Windows versions of Microsoft 365.

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Excel 2024: Clean Data with Power Query »

November 14, 2024 - by Bill Jelen

Power Query is built in to Windows versions of Office 365, Excel 2016, Excel 2019 and is available as a free download in Windows versions of Excel 2010 and Excel 2013. The tool is designed to extract, transform, and load data into Excel from a variety of sources.

Excel 2024: Improve Your Macro Recording »

November 11, 2024 - by Bill Jelen

I loved the 1985 version of the Macro Recorder in Lotus 1-2-3. The code was hard to understand, but it worked. There are some defaults in the Excel Macro Recorder that cause misery for anyone trying to record macros. Here are three tips to make the macro experience possibly better.

Excel 2024: Interpolate between a starting and ending number »

November 7, 2024 - by Bill Jelen

How to interpolate between a starting and ending number.

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Excel 2024: Use Fuzzy Match in Power Query

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