How do I make wild card functions within excel?

Hello, Does anyone happen to know how to make wild card functions within excel? For example, I need to set up a function that would compare all data in a specific column to all other data in the same column (or perhaps another one). For example, I'd want to have each date in the column compared to every other date in the column, and only return results if the dates are within a certain threshold of each other (+/- 3 days, 5 days, etc).

If I can figure out how to do this, I'll then have to have the informaiton compared against an additional column to return a result.
Perhaps there is a better way to accomplish this outside of functions? In any case, I'd greatly appreciate it if you could point me in the right direction.

Thank you for looking at this humdingaling. The difference would be that the dates, wouldn't just be within a specified range, they would need to be compared to all the other dates in the column to see if any of the dates are within a range of any of the other dates. In effect it would be a moving goal post where it's comparing all dates against any other date to see if they are within a range of eachother. I can post a sample sheet if that would be helpful.

Thanks, I went ahead and attached a sample of the types of dates I'd be working with. Please feel free to let me know if you need any additional info.

Thanks for looking at it. I may need more help than I realized.

1)How do I eliminate the merged cells from the entire sheet?
2)I can provide the additional fields but really just want to start with having the dates compared to each other so I can take it one step at a time.
3) Thanks for the info on the time. I did not consider this aspect. Is there an easy way to remove the time from the cell?

Sorry for the confusion.

A few comments/observations...
1. why do you have merged cells in the sample? Merged cells cause more problems than anything else
2. you have a list of dates, with nothing associated with them? It would help if you provided a before/after so we can see what you want
3. Your dates include time. This could be problematic when comparing a date to a range of dates - time is a decimal of 1(day), so 7/1/2013 is less than 7/1/2013 00:00:01 AM

Exactly. This is why it seems confusing to me. The dates I'm wanting to compare to are also the dates within column A. I'm wanting to compare any date in column A to any other date in column A and the cell return a value only if the dates are within a certain time frame from each other (i.e. 1,2,3 days etc.). Another way to say this would be, I am wanting to compare all column A dates against all other column A dates by a specific criteria, such as "within 24hrs of any other date". Perhaps I am going about this the wrong way?

The blank cells left by unmerging would be problematic but not as much as the merged cell lol.

Thanks again for your input.

Excellent FDibbins! That's just what I needed. Appreciate the tip!

Do you think there is a better way to go about comparing data within a range? Do you think creating a function is the best option for this kind of sorting?