Counting almost identical duplicates

[Anders]

Hi,

I have a very big excel worksheet (35 000 ++) with company names where I'm
trying to find duplicates, but also company names that are very similar.
Meaning names that are almost the same, but some might differ slightly but
still representing the same company. Is it possible to write a formula in
excel that can help me with this problem?

Many thanks!

 

[Gary''s Student]

Consider using AutoFilter:

Data > Filter... > AutoFilter > (Custom...) > Contains

This will allow you to display and count similar names like
Ford
Ford Motor Company


etc.

 

[Anders]

Thank you,

I see you point but I dont think it solves my problem, maybe the way I asked
the question made it difficult to understand my challenge here. I'm trying to
find all possible duplicates without going through all of the different
possibilities. I want a spreadsheet with all the companies still in the
spreadsheet, but with the cells where I might suspect there might be a
duplicate marked in red. Let’s say in a given cell, where more than e.g. 5 of
the first letters are similar to one other cell in the spreadsheet would be
marked in red. I feel there must be possible to do this in excel, but I don’t
know how..

I have tried the ( =COUNTIF(A:A;A7)>1) but it only marks the cells that are
100% identical.

Thank you for your help.