Excel help?

Django x2 · 6 Jul 2011 at 12:43

I'm comparing a list of applications against the Microsoft approved software compatibility list. Now, the nice thing do to would be to just look for duplicate cells, but I know this won't work as the list of apps I have might not be quite in the same naming convention as the MS list.

Is there a way to get Excel to highlight partial matches?

So, say on the MS list, it was Adobe Acrobat Reader 9 and on my list it was Acrobat, it would be highlighted?

Thanks

Participant · 7 Jul 2011 at 10:09

You can make Excel look for a string of text within a cell and return its position:

If column C returns a number, then the string in column B is within column A. You don't really need the bit about returning blank if the cell is blank, it's just a habit I'm in. If you want it highlighted then use conditional formatting to shade any cells > 0.

Django x2 · 7 Jul 2011 at 13:56

Sweet

Thanks Robbie

Django x2 · 8 Jul 2011 at 09:30

ok, my issue seems to be a little more complicated in that, the output of the MS ACL obviously contains thousands of applications which I don't have in my list. So, cell A and cell B don't always line up, therefore always retuning no result.

For instance, Cell A1 might have Adobe in it in my list, but in the MS ACL, Cell A1 is .123app. This means if I try to get a result in cell C1, it won't return a result. So this causes an issue later on when the MS ACL gets to Adobe, my list is on Microsoft products and again returns nothing (even though Adobe is in both lists)