So, in my case something like this should be enough: In short, match rows by identifying similar matches between these columns.Ĭan you see why that’s so powerful now? None of the data items need to be exactly the same, just similar enough, or more similar than any other possible matches in the data set. The process to set up a match requires you to select one or more data points from each table to create a “fuzzy data binding”. Clicking the tab opens this Fuzzy Lookup task pane: You’ll note a Fuzzy Lookup tab has appeared in the toolbar across the top of your Excel application. I make each one a table, by selecting the sheet and pressing CTRL-L on the data. To prepare, you’ll need your two (or three, or four!) separate data sets in separate tabs. When you’re done, head back to this post! Hopefully you’ll have a go yourself!įirstly, install the add-in by following these instructions. Really, this outcome could be achived by some simple find/replace editing but hopefully it’s enough for you to see the potential power in this process. Let’s take a look at my basic example to get you started. The add-in is remarkably powerful, especially to a user who’s only used to matching functions like VLOOKUP. You can use this add-in to cleanup difficult problems like weeding out (“fuzzy match”) duplicate rows within a single table where the duplicates *are* duplicates but don’t match exactly or to “fuzzy join” similar rows between two different tables. The Fuzzy Lookup add-in for Excel performs fuzzy matching of textual data in Excel.

Fuzzy lookup in excel 2016