Filter data using non-numeric list. Help!

[ExcelNewb24]

Hello, this is my first post here. Hope everyone is having a great day. I would greatly appreciate any help on this!

I have data in an excel worksheet for a few dozen companies. It's a lot of data--more than you would manually want to sort though. The data describes business agreements that those companies engaged in. My columns show Party A, Party B, dates, agreement type, etc. Party B includes hundreds of companies. I am trying to filter this data to only show agreements made with certain companies. Party A will always be a relevant company, but party B might not be.

I have another list with 14 Party B companies I am particularly interested in. I would want to filter all of the rows and end up with data where Party B must contain one of the names from the list of 14 companies. So hypothetically, this list contains "Sandwich Inc.", "PB&J Industries, LTD", International Bunny Machinations Corp.", etc. I would like to be able able to filter out, or somehow reorganize/sort, so that I can easily find rows where Party B contains at least one of those names (including common variations, and adding/dropping terms like Ltd/Corp/Inc).

The next step would be to then create a frequency table for the types of agreements for this filtered data. I think I have that part figured out though.

I would greatly appreciate any help. It would easily surpass any Christmas present!

 

[sheetspread]

The advanced filter will do this. If the names don't exactly match, you can use the Fuzzy Lookup add-in or the fuzzyvlookup UDF (in which case you can bypass the filter).

 

[ExcelNewb24]

I'm not familiar with those functions, or how to use the advanced filter in this way. Hopefully they are easy to use.


You know of any good videos or similar posts that do this step-by-step? I'm new to excel, don't expect anyone to baby-feed me, but would appreciate any resources if you knew of any. Seems like there would be a few steps to this, but I appreciate you laying it out.

Thanks.

 

[sheetspread]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v-qxcjZbyo for the fuzzy add in (which you can download from microsoft, just google it)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH6jPVHnc9Q - for regular vlookup

 

[Peter_SSs]

Welcome to the MrExcel board!

(including common variations, and adding/dropping terms like Ltd/Corp/Inc).

Once you start getting into too much of that, things can get very tricky.
See if this, using Advanced Filter as suggested is any use

In column G I have the "parties of interest", but I have given the minimum information to identify each, and enclosed in *s
The heading in that column should exactly match the heading in column B

The steps are:

1. Select A1:D??
2. Data ribbon tab -> Advanced (in the Sort & Filter group) -> Filter the list, in-place -> List range: (should already be populated with the range from your selection in step 1) -> Criteria range: $G$1:$G$4 (or just G1:G4 would do) -> OK


To unfilter, click 'Clear' in that same Sort & Filter group

Excel Workbook
	A	B	C	D	E	F	G
1	Party A	Party B	Date	Type			Party B
2	Some Party	ABC Ltd	data	data			*Sandwich*
3	Some Party	Sandwich Inc is included	data	data			*PB&J Indust*
4	Some Party	S'wich Inc is too abbreviated	data	data			*Bunny Machinations*
5	Some Party	The company is Bunny Machinations Corporation	data	data
6
Adv Fltr