Searching for a substring in a range of strings from a range of substrings

**dallan** · 03-04-2011, 01:23 PM

Hi,

I've been searching for a while and I haven't found anything useful. Here's my dilemma

I have a worksheet with 2 columns. Column A = Item # - Column B = Item Description

There are about 2000 entries.

In a second worksheet I have 1 column: Column A = Brand name.

There are perhaps 10 brand name entries.

I need to identify on the first sheet in Column C if any one of the brands appears in the description.

Any help is really appreciated!

Thanks

**DonkeyOte** · 03-04-2011, 01:40 PM

Without knowing the finer details perhaps... do the following

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we can account for non-existent items as necessary.

If you need further assistance I'd suggest posting a dummy sample file to demo. requirements

**dallan** · 03-04-2011, 02:00 PM

Wow, this worked wonderfully. Can you break down why it worked?

Other questions:

Why and what is 9399E+307?
Why the REPT function and why does the range in there go to A11?

**DonkeyOte** · 03-04-2011, 02:25 PM

Regards the above see: http://www.excelforum.com/2469516-post4.html

The use of REPT etc is to replace any blanks in the "brand" list with zzzz else they (blanks) would distort results.

Use of A11 is a typo on my part.