Matching data with 2 conditions: 1. Firm identifier (exact) 2. Employee name (closest)

[ROKEXCEL]

Hi everyone!

I am trying to match employee information between two different excel sheets. Currently, both sheets have firm identifier codes for each employee that match exactly. In addition, the both sheets have employees' full names that can have minor differences between each other (e.g. "John M. Doe" and "John Doe"). How can I create a formula that uses two criteria where the first one needs to be an exact match (firm identifier) and the other one a closest match (employee name)?

For each firm there exist information only for 1-20 people.

I tried to use the formula from http://www.excelforum.com/excel-gene...est-match.html ,but I assume that only works if the second condition is a number.

Thanks!

[hcyeap]

Hi,

I just asked a similar question yesterday and it was solved.
If you are interested you may refer to http://www.excelforum.com/excel-prog...onditions.html

[ROKEXCEL]

Hi,

Thanks for the post. However, if I understand correctly, your two conditions can be matched exactly in your excel. In my case the second condition has to be "the closest" match. I cannot figure out how I could do that with normal match formula as I have names and not numbers as the variables that I am matching. The "match type" can only have values 1 or -1 in the case that we are using numbers.