Hey There,
I have two spreadsheets and I want to line up the records with each other. The only way I can do this by comparing two strings of text and looking for regions of identity and in case it meets a threshold I need a value to be returned.

In the attached two spreadsheets, what I need to do is

For example From sheet one, (reference data A), I need to compare Inventory part Description, Column A, Name, with Company data, column C from sheet 2, company data. And then what needs to happen is, once I get a hit, I need to bring back the value from sheet 1, reference data, column B, Riskgroup.
To give you an idea of the likely % match, problem at hand, for example,
Sheet one reference data, A936 = “THP-1”
Lines up with (“sheet 2, company data”), cell C2 = “THP-1; Acute Monocytic Leukemia; Human (Homo sapiens)

To further complicate things, it is normally only the first few characters, less than 10 where the match is and the rest of the string confuses the situation with words like human that would be common to many records. For this reason, I could probably just move the first 10 or so characters to a new column. There is a formula for that I think.
It’s never going to be perfect but if I can line these two sets of records up this way then it saves a hell of a lot of work. I think a visual basic formula might be a way to go but the whole thing is not really my area. I am no computer programmer / not even a decent excel user.

Thanks so much.

Please see attached

Cheers

Joe