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Formula that finds a match for cells in Column J in Book1.xls anywhere in Column N in Book2.xls

Book1 Column J has more values than Column N in Book2.xls, and they are in different order. Furthermore the entries in Book1 Column J often have spaces that the entries in Book2 Column N don't have (see example below). Therefore we need something that ignores spaces and just searchesto match all the characters excluding spaces. (I think this is possible, I don't know).

Also, if this is of any relevance, how do I get rid of all the spaces in a cell, since there might be 20 or 30 spaces in a given entry?

I hope this makes sense.

Thanks,
John

Book1 Column J:
28 DEF LIGHTS, 32DEF LIGHTS CANNOT GO OFF    (has trailing spaces as well)

Book2 Column N:
28DEF LIGHTS, 32 DEF LIGHTS CANNOT GO OFF

SUBSTITUTE FORMULA:
=SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(N2," ","",1)," ","",1)," ","",1)

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HainKurt

use

=MATCH(TRIM(A1),DATA,0)

where DATA is your lookup range

HainKurt

check this sample...
LookupRange.xls

barry houdini

TRIM will remove all leading and trailing spaces and will convert multiple internal spaces to single ones - so using TRIM only won't give a match between J2 and J5 in your example above because 28DEF won't match - to compare regardless of spaces use SUBSTITUTE, e.g. to remove all spaces from A1

=SUBSTITUTE(A1," ","")

so to match without spaces being considered, in lookup value and match range

=MATCH(SUBSTITUTE(N2," ",""),SUBSTITUTE(J$2:J$10," ",""),0)

needs to be confirmed with CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER

regards, barry

John Carney

ASKER

Thanks for the posts. "=MATCH(TRIM(A1),DATA,0)
" would work great except I need to get rid of all the spaces, not just the leading and trailing ones. I can create a helper column which gets rid of the zeros. ideally with formulas but if necessary with a function or macro

See attached workbook.

Thanks,
John
LookupRange-2-.xls

HainKurt

try

=MATCH(replace(A1, " ", ""), DATA, 0)

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HainKurt

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barry houdini

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