[RESOLVED] Excel 2010 : String comparision : values containing non-uk characters

Hi there,

I need to compare 2 sets of data and flag up where there is either a direct match or a close match. For example, I have a name and a city value in each data set;

Data Set 1:
Column A Column B
Aurélie Marsh Paris Cedex 02
Françoise Butt Lille Cedex
Andy Pitt Lille

Data Set 2:
Column A Column B
Aurelie Marsh Paris Cedex
Francoise Butt Lille
Barry Hurthly Paris

I would expect the Aurelie Marsh and Francoise Butt records to be flagged as a match even though the name are written with the extended character and the city is having almost the same value.

Is this possible? I don't want to take the data into Access unless I really have to, and I would like to avoid substituting the characters from the extended set.

Thanks for anything you can offer.

You could replace the special characters with normal characters then match...
Is it code you are using? And will it need to account for the data being on a different row (yet still match)?

Thanks for your reply.

yes, it is code that I would like. There is a 'pot' of data with 50k row and a list of records that I need to check one-by-one to see if the value appears in the 'pot'.

looks like you will need some lookup table to compare the non matching characters

Ok

So your 50k pot, could have a second field that holds normal characters. Then you can perform the matches you need from your search record(s) against the pots 'fixed' data without amending the original data.


How are you doing your code for the 'almost' matches?

Sorry to reply late on this. Been away but wanted to loop back to thanks those who posted a reply or comment. The project went away to the burning issue of the day is no longer keeping me awake at night

Many thanks to WestConn1 and Ecniv.