Compare Two Data Files

[Guest]

I'm having dfficulty comparing imported data from two files. One was
imported from a text file and is not imported in number which can be fixed.
The more difficult issue is that there is a blank space in some of these at
the front that causes errors using vlookup or index. Are there any other
functions that can ignore those differences?

 

[Peo Sjoblom]

TRIM removes leading, trailing or extra spaces so you can just wrap the
cells in TRIM like

=VLOOKUP(TRIM(A1),TRIM(B2:C200),2,0)

entered with ctrl + shift & enter

I didn't know if the spaces were in lookup value or table thus 2 TRIM, I
guess it's probably the table

Regards,

Peo Sjoblom

 

[Guest]

Can you use trim function to remove leading and trailing blank?

If you want to use it on say a column of text values lying in A1 to A10 then
in B1 you will enter the formula =trim(A1) and copy the formula down through
to B10.
Then highlight B1 to B10 and do Edit/Copy and then place your cursor on A1
and do Edit/Pastespecial/Values. At this stage the trimmed values are in your
original range A1:A10. Now you can delete the range B1 to B10.

Alok