compare columns in excel for matches with mac excel 2013

We can see that none of the items in each list is an exact match, but they are likely the same product.įor example, in list A we have 'Macaroni and cheese', but in list B we have 'Macaroni & Cheese'. These are small and only have the one column, but imagine we're working with two large datasets with hundreds or thousands or products and many other columns. In our example, we have List A and List B. Not sure what Power Query is? Then check out this Introduction to Power Query beforehand. No, because we now have a fuzzy match option in Power Query. This is where we realize we have to manually match our products from the two lists and eventually we give up and start to cry! Right? We can't even use wildcards in a lookup function because the product names aren't different in a predictable way. This means we can't just use a lookup function because we don't have exact matches.

But each company might have slightly different names for the same item. Our job is to match products between the two lists. Imagine this. We have been given a list of products from company A and a list of products from company B.

Compare columns in excel for matches with mac excel 2013