Duplicates/Similar Text

[RBone90]

I have a strange question and I am going to do the best I can to explain it. I have a large list of invoice numbers and vendor numbers, and I want to look for possible duplicate payments. I can easily write a formula to find a duplicate of the same invoice number but is there a way to find one similar? For example a invoice might be entered wrong the second time (107896 and 107869). I would like to pull that invoice so I am aware and can look into it.

 

[hotabae]

So, I threw something together trying to do this, and I ran into a major problem fairly quickly. (I was comparing the number of matching characters)

One problem is how it handles consecutive numbers.

In your case, 107896 would be deemed 'close' to 107897.

107897 would be deemed 'close' to 107898...

107898 would be deemed 'close' to 107899... (and so on...)

This would cause pretty much everything to be considered a duplicate.

Unless you are specifically looking for 2 transposed digits, I don't see how you would be able to pull it off.

(the 2 transposed digits case would still trigger a ton of flagged entries)