Check if any Other Cells in Column Start with Same Text and End with Different...

Hi All,

I have a problem which I am hoping you can help me with. I manage stock of products at the print company where I work. They are broken into 3 categories:

• Items We Produce
• Items Bought From Historic Supplier 1
• Items Bought From Historic Supplier 2

This is as we have taken on new contracts the incumbent supplier had stock left which we bought, but had to honour whatever pricing was in place until that stock ran out.

I get a daily Excel report from our system which in column A lists all the codes and in Column B the Stock we have. There is then a minimum level on the Master Code (the one we produce) and a re-order quantity. My issue is that the report is flagging that something has gone below it's minimum when actually there is some stock under one of the previous supplier codes that we can use and so it actually isn't?

I am trying to write a formula in Cell C2 which will check all of column A for cells which start with the text in A2 but that have any other text following that, and if that situation occurs to add up the stock in column B for all those items. Hope that makes sense. I have included an example spreadsheet so you can see what I mean.

Any questions let me know! Hope you can help!




Chris