Wildcard search using vlookup

Can anyone enlighten me with the following problem.

Task: To sort on sales item number from item + version number list
Problem: No uniform string length (cannot apply LEFT or RIGHT)
Cannot use vlookup : argument FALSE gives only exact match, TRUE gives the next highest value in the target list.

Manually using (ctrlF) with sales item* wildcard works perfectly. Is there a way to incorporate this manual method into a macro to search line for line in a list and to output the results in a new worksheet?

Can you post a workbook containing some sample values and the results you want to see, based on the sample data? That way we can better understand what you want to do.

Unless I'm missing something...In the workbook you posted, none of the "Sales Items" sheet values exist anywhere in the "version items + Bin" sheet. Consequently, I still don't see an example of what you want to do.

Well, I'm still not seeing an example of what you want to do that uses the sample data you posted.

I'll take a guess that maybe this will help....
On your "Sales Items" sheet, this regular formula returns the count of "version items + Bin" sheet cells that contain the "material" code from Col_A of the "Sales Items" sheet:

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Does that help?