Compare text strings to find mispellings

[Tarver]

I'm working with a large list of partners, and data is input by many parties. Unfortunately, not everyone sicks to the naming nomenclature and human error abounds!

Here's a short snippet of that list ...

[TABLE="width: 256"]
<colgroup><col></colgroup><tbody>[TR]
[TD]Harbor Freight[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Hard Rock Cafe[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Harley Davidson[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Harley-Davidson[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Harmony[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Hey Cupcakes[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD]Hibbett Sports[/TD]
[/TR]
</tbody>[/TABLE]

You can see that either the entries are very different, or there's an occasional entry with a misspelling or variation (like the hyphen instead of a space in Harley Davidson.) I'm looking to find a way to compare the entries in this list with each other, and where these is a one or two-character difference, to highlight or flag it for review.

EXACT doesn't work, because it tells me only that the items in list list are unique -- and they are. I need to see where two adjacent entries in the alphabetically sorted list are similar, but not the same.

Any thoughts?

You help is most appreciated.

 

[Eric W]

The Levenshtein distance tells you how many changes are needed to change one text into another. I wrote a macro to calculate it. To try it, open a copy of your workbook. Press Alt-F11 to open the VBA editor. Press Alt-I-M to add a module. Paste the following code into the window that opens:

Public Function LevDist(str1 As String, str2 As String)
Dim d() As Long, m As Long, n As Long, i As Long, j As Long, Cost As Long

    m = Len(str1)
    n = Len(str2)
    ReDim d(0 To m, 0 To n)
    
    For i = 1 To m
        d(i, 0) = i
    Next i
    
    For j = 1 To n
        d(0, j) = j
    Next j
    
    For j = 1 To n
        For i = 1 To m
            Cost = IIf(Mid(str1, i, 1) = Mid(str2, j, 1), 0, 1)
            d(i, j) = WorksheetFunction.Min(d(i - 1, j) + 1, d(i, j - 1) + 1, d(i - 1, j - 1) + Cost)
        Next i
    Next j
    
    LevDist = d(m, n)
    
End Function

Press Alt-Q to close the editor. Now assuming your list starts in A2, put this formula in B2:

=IF(levdist(A2,A1)<=2,"Check this one","")

And it will flag any values that are 2 changes or less different from the previous value. Case counts. There are several variations of this to try, but see if this is along the lines of what you're looking for.

 

[Tarver]

Oustandingly brilliant!

Thank you!

 

[Eric W]

Glad to help!