compare 2 columns for 1 or more similar or matching text?

[dmasvar]

Hi

any help appreciated, could someone give an idea or example of how to tacke it..

basically 2 columsn of text.. with each column there could be more than 1 word.. company names ..

i just need to compare the text of column a and column b to output in column c of same row to see if there is one or more matching text or even similar text, whatever order they are in, eg. even if first 4 letters are similar, i'd like the output..

not sure how to procceed or function

 

[NBVC]

I'm not sure about find similar text (what's your definition of similar). Excel will find matches of full or partial strings.

I suggest you take a look at the built in Text, Logical and Lookup functions.

Functions such as Find, Search, Substitute, Left, Mid, Right, Exact, etc... will definitely get you started.

Perhaps if you post examples of what you are comparing to what you want to achieve, the forum could assist a little more in leading you in the right direction. But remember that you have to be consistent in your formulas if you want to be able to copy the formulas to other cells, to achieve consistent results. So avoid insert specific text strings unless you want to always find that text string in each cell searched. For example, using functions like If(Left(A1,3)=Left(B1,3),"match","no match) will compare the first 3 characters of each string and return a result of match or no match respectively and this can easily be copied down a column with consistent results. But functions like IF(Find(A1,"CAT")=Find(B1,"CAT"),"match","no match") will only work if you want to specifically find the string "CAT" and so may not work if copied down.