Formula for matching partial results?

Hello!
I'm looking for help with a formula to find partial matches in a spreadsheet. I need to compare login id's from 2 separate systems, which may or may not match exactly. For example, in column A I have a login name from system 1, and in column B I have a login name from system 2. I'm trying to determine if these are the same people or not, thugh the names may be different.

I would like to match if A1 is Bob Jones and B1 is Bob.Jones
or A1 is Mike Jones and B1 is also Mike Jones

In addition, I would be looking these up (VLookup?) across a range. So, with A1 being Bob Jones, I want to look up across B1:B10 to see if any of those match or partially match.

Hope this all makes sense, and I appreciate your help. Thanks!
Tim

Hi

If you replace any spaces with a wildcard (*), and add a leading / trailing wildcard, you may get somewhere using VLOOKUP. It won't work for Bob Jones and Jones, Bob tho. Something else you could do would be to search the site for fuzzy logic and see what comes up. There have been various posts along those lines, and something there may help you along.

rylo

try this macro