Can Excel Suggest a VLOOKUP result?

[CriticalMass048]

I don't like LOOKUP because in a lot of cases, you want an exact match, and if you use LOOKUP, Excel will "guess" at that you want, and unless you happen to stumble across an error, it may be that way or months. Plus, the list has to be in alphabetical order for best results.

The problem with VLOOKUP is that if you get back a "N/A", you have to manually look at it and see what the problem could be. Maybe it's searching for "John Edwards" but can only find "Jonathan Edwards", so it throws up its hands and gives up. Likewise if someone is searching for "TJ Smith", but the database has "T.J. Smith", or vice versa.

Is there a way to either:
a) Use VLOOKUP, but if it can't find an exact match, will offer a guess and ask if that's the one you want?
b) Use LOOKUP, but let the user know whether it's an exact match, or just a very good guess?
c) A way to do what I want that I'm not thinking of?

Thanks!

[AliGW]

No - that’s the short answer!

However, if you can creat a list of alternatives for Excel to look through, then it’s possible, but the bottom line is that Excel can’t do the thinking for you.

You might want to download and try out the Fuzzy Match add-in.