Lookup Help Please?!

[Tammy Lowe]

I am trying to match one name record downloaded from a database to another
name record downloaded from our information system. The two name lists are
not in the same format, so an identical search will not work. The downloaded
database list may or may not have middle initial or middle name and also
contains business names, so parsing the information out into last name and
first name to concatenate for the match is also not feasible. Can anyone
think of a way to use the wildcard search to determine if a match is
identified between the two lists? Any and all help would be greatly
appreciated! Thanks, in advance!

Tammy

 

[Luke M]

If looking for "Joe Smith" and cell A2 contains "Mr. Joe A Smith, ACME
industires"
=ISNUMBER(SEARCH("*Joe*Smith*",A2))

Returns true in this instance. Hopefully this provides a starting point for
what your are looking for.

 

[Tammy Lowe]

Hi Luke: Thanks for your suggestion. This would require me to type in every
name to do the lookup from one list to the other. Is that correct? Our
employee list is about 275 names long...and the GSA listing is nearly 70,000
names long (obviously split into two workbooks due to Excel's row
limitation). I also need to lookup the physician and vendor listings and
cross-reference them to the GSA list, both of which are significantly more
than 275 rows).

I am trying not to have to do that as I could just as easily go online and
type them into the searchable database (manual process). I am trying to
utilize a more electronic approach by downloading the database and using the
lookup function.

Would it be possible to utilize the information in one list with the
wildcard to search the other list? Please advise when you can. Thanks!