Help matching rows

Hi,

I need help matching the X (column A) and Y (column B) variables in the attached file with INDEX(MATCH) but I'm failing at the MATCH part.

The situation:
Both, X and Y can be numbers or numbers mixed with text. The Y variables always have 6 digits but the first digit might be a leading 0. The Y variables should represent the first 6 digits of the X variables, but the X variables should not have the leading 0.

The approach:
After removing the leading 0 from the Y variable (column C) I tried the following:

1) comparing Y with the left part of X, which is dependent on the length of Y
= Match (Y; Left (X; Length (Y);0)

2) I wasn't sure MATCH would work with LENGTH and LEFT, so I tried shortening X to the length of Y first (column G and H) and then match column B with G and H.
G = Left (X; 6)
H = Left (X; 5)
= Match (Y; G; 0)
= Match (Y; H; 0)

3) instead of of comapring X and Y with the same number of digits, I tried comparing Y* with X
= Match (Y & "*"; X;0)

None of my ideas work properly. I'm not sure why - might be due to formatting but I haven't been able to solve it that way. Any ideas?

Thank you.

no longer important

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Maybe this in D2, copied down:

=IF(B2="","",IFERROR(1/(1/SUMPRODUCT(--ISNUMBER(SEARCH(IFERROR(B2+0,B2),$A$2:$A$300)),ROW($A$2:$A$300))),""))

Try in E2:

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Originally Posted by Iwantto

bebo021999: Can you explain what the index function does in =index(1 ; )=1? What does the empty argument represent?

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Let's say:
X=IF(LEFT(B2)="0",MID(B2,2,255),B2) will change 012345 into 12345, or 456789 into itself
SEARCH(X,$A$2:$A$300) will search X string in A2, A3, ...then A300
for instant: X=1234; A3=123456
SEARCH(X,A3)=1 (X string is found at 1st position in A3)
so, SEARCH(X,$A$2:$A$300) establish (0,1,0,0,...,0), (let's say: Y)
then, MATCH(1,Y,0) will return pos of 1 in Y array
This is array formula, confirmed by ctrl-shift-enter (CSE)
To avoid CSE, wrap Y inside INDEX function:
=MATCH(1,INDEX(Y,),0)
This is my final formula

Hope it helps