Compare and extract on match

[FergusonRK]

Hi Folks,

Apologies is this is the wrong forum for this type of question. Moving fast to a deadline and am in random orbit. Not an Excel guru, not even a novice. Just get thrust into it as the occassion requires.

I have the need to compare two spreadsheets for a matching string. I am thinking of it as, reading the first cell in a particular column from the first spreadsheet, call it SS1 and comparing that cell value to the full range of cells in a second spreadsheet, SS2.

If the string in the cell from SS1 matches the string in a cell from SS2, I need to then pull a value from a different cell of SS2 (same row) and place it into a cell in SS1.

Doing this manually is painfully inefficient, time consuming, tedious, and hard on the eyes.

Does anyone know of a macro or formula that will do what I need? I am not able to provide actual spreadsheets as examples as they contain protected data. But essetially I need to look at a value in the first spread sheet that represents a piece of equipment, then search the second spreadsheet for a match. If there is a match, I need to find and pull a serial number from spreadsheet 2 and put it into the serial number field/cell in spreadsheet 1 in the row containing the search value that matched....

Can someone provide the macro/formula/research material/point of contact to make this happen.

Thank you very much,

Ferg

 

[Robert Mika]

Hallo and welcome:
Look at
MS Excel: VLOOKUP Function (WS)
or
INDEX/MATCH

Excel Index Function and Match Function

 

[Vidar]

(deleted)

 

[shyy]

Do a search for "FUZZY LOOKUP", I can't remember the guys name but he posted a macro that can help match strings. Didn't work 100% because that would be impossible to do in excel, but his macro worked for what I need. That is to match a filename against 100's of PDF files.