Searching text and assign a category problem.

Perhaps this is a better forum to place my question ....


I download information from my bank relating to different transactions.

I manually set up a drop down list in a new blank column of cells and manually go through every entry from bank and categorize a transaction to a number of valid categories.

For example, the text in a cell where I see "Mobil 1", I would select "Gasoline" from my drop down list and manually create a connection that this transaction is related to my gas expenses for the month.

If course, you can imagine that nested IF's will not do, as any one of these cells will be categorized into about 20 categories. I cannot get a lookup table to work, so I am looking for another way....

Any suggestions ?

What I want to do is ( overview ):

1. From a new blank cell, search another cell's text from bank downloads for key words like 'Taxes' or "Gas Bar" or "Pay".
2. Assign a category in that new blank cell to a predetermined list of categories like "Gasoline", "Income", "Property Taxes", etc.

Any help or direction would be appreciated,

Thx !!!

Use vlookup. Define key term and its mapping value in a separate worksheet. Insert a new column to get the mapping value based on term indicated in the description column of the bank.

Ah, I see. For each possible entry I want to try and find a value for ( I have determined about 475 of them ) I put a corresponding category in the cell beside it. Then VLookup my downloaded info and use the assigned category. Gotcha.

Thanks, Thats easier than I thought actually ...