Match two cells composed of text in the same row

I have 570 records in one sheet and 330 on the other one. They are the same data and I want to match them but i have been doing so manually because in the one w/ 330 there are missing values, so I have been copying and pasting but takes too long. The 570 is complete, i took it from the census data and the 330 is not.

I want to be able to match them in the same row including missing values so I can use it in ArcGIS

I have tried to match w/ the match function but have not had luck...

see if anyone could help... I would appreciate

Give the VLOOKUP function a try, but in case that doesn't work, can you post a sample workbook?

INDEX/MATCH is the most robust and the fastest worksheet function for this task.

=INDEX(RangeToReturnAValueFrom,Match(Value,RangetoMatchValueTo,FALSE))
=INDEX(Sheet1!B:B,MATCH(Sheet2!$A2,Sheet1!$A:$A,0))

Look at MATCH first...$A2 on the current sheet is spotted on the other sheet in column A. When it is found, the position of that match is returned to the INDEX as a positional reference and the item in the exact same position in column B (the "indexed" column) is the final result.

You should make sure you can do all that on ONE sheet in a simple formula before complicating it (making it harder to read) by adding Sheet and Workbook references.

If this is really that hard, blow off the sample and post a REAL sanitized excerpt from your ACTUAL sheets with correct sheetnames/workbook names and everything.

It's not going to work. Your data doesn't have common columnar values. One sheet is in standard US alphabetic characters (though all caps, but we could get around that), and the other is longer column of longer strings with Mexican alphabet.

We could strip off the first 12 characters and the remaining data still doesn't match. Maybe someone else can suggest a way to easily convert your mexican text strings into american, or vice versa. Right now, there's nothing to match.

There is nothing to "bring over" from the reference sheet on your updated sheet. You had 570 rows laid out like this originally:

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...and now you just have 218 rows of:

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There's nothing there to "retrieve" since these are the exact same words in the second sheet.

Once you DO get your reference data cleaned up so that there is matching names AND data to retrieve, are you SURE you don't want to just try and applying the formula I gave you? It's going to be the exact formula with the columns updated...

You're using Excel, so I have to assume you can look at two formula and see how they are related. In post #3 I gave you the syntax for bringing data from one sheet to another matching a piece of information.

=INDEX(RangeToReturnAValueFrom,Match(Value,RangetoMatchValueTo,FALSE))[/color]
=INDEX(Sheet1!B:B,MATCH(Sheet2!$A2,Sheet1!$A:$A,0))

Can't you compare that formula to your sheet and work out the columns to use?

The first piece in red is the data to bring over. The first piece you want is the TOT column, right? So that's Sheet "data to match" column C.

Then the item to match first is in cell A2 on "reference" and you want to match that to the column B on "data to match", right? So you just substitute all those pieces in the example formula I gave.

=INDEX('data to match'!C:C,MATCH('reference data'!$A2,'data to match'!$B:$B,0))

Once that first formula is in B2, copy it down. Then make an adjustment to the first section only to create the INDEX for the next piece you want, column D. In fact, you can probably just copy that formula over to the right and it will adjust to the next column.