Identifying non-identical duplicates

[belpal]

Hi there, I have looked through posts relating to duplicates and can't seem to find an answer.

I have a huge spreadsheet with company names. There are loads of duplicated companies, however the company names may also have been entered slightly differently, e.g.:

ABC Limited
ABC Ltd

These two compies are the same, their company names have been entered slightly differently. Is there a way to identify duplicates say based on the first 5 letters entered in each cell?

Thanks

[AliGW]

There are instructions at the top of the page explaining how to attach your sample workbook.

Please update your forum profile to your latest version of Excel.

[oeldere]

Make a list of all companies (in a new sheet).

Add in the next column the name of the "Group" of the companie.

After that use VLookup to select the Group of the companies (for all companies), in the original sheet.