Fuzzy Excel



Excel Fuzzy Lookup Add-In is used to match similar, but not exactly matching data. This function is often used instead of VLOOKUP, when we want to compare two columns which have very similar data, but not exactly the same. As an output, Fuzzy Lookup returns a table of matched similar data in the chosen column. In daily data manipulation, there is a common need to compare two same data sets where one of them comes from some external source and can be misspelled or typed incorrectly. In this tutorial, you will see how to install Fuzzy Lookup Add-In, prepare data and create a Fuzzy Lookup, which can be very useful in data consolidation and save a lot of time.

Fuzzy Duplicate Finder is a tool for Microsoft Excel 2016 - 2007 that helps you find and correct similar records. The add-in quickly performs approximate match according to the settings you select and changes all typos into the correct equivalents of your choice. How to use the Find Fuzzy Duplicates tool. Start Find Fuzzy Duplicates.

  1. Installation of Fuzzy Lookup in Excel
  2. Explanation of the function
  3. Preparation of data for Fuzzy Lookup
  4. Create Fuzzy Lookup
  1. A brief tutorial on how to use Microsoft Excel Fuzzy Lookup add-on for Excel.
  2. FREE STUFF 70+ MUST KNOW EXCEL SHORTCUT KEYS: Download the pdf UNDERSTAND & FIX EXCEL ERRORS: Download the pdf The video covers both scenarios. In Office 365 we can use XLOOKUP and FILTER to perform fuzzy or partial matches, but in older versions of Excel we have to use VLOOKUP, MATCH and INDEX.The SEARCH and ISNUMBER functions are also used. The video demonstrates.
  3. Download Excel File: how to perform a partial text lookup; Finding “Coca Cola” in “Coca Cola Inc.” or the reve.

Fuzzy Lookup is not a standard Excel function, therefore you can’t find it in your standard tabs and buttons. In order to enable this function, Microsoft created an Add-In which can be downloaded from the following link:

Microsoft

After you have downloaded the installation file, you need to open it and install following instructions. Once you have installed the Add-In, next time when you open an Excel it will automatically import Add-In. As a result, you will get a new tab at the end of a Ribbon called “Fuzzy Lookup” and a button with the same name:

As mentioned in the intro of the article, Fuzzy Lookup is used when we want to match two sets of data (two tables), but we don’t have exactly the same values in matching fields. For example, we want to match two tables based on values in column “Name” and in a first table we have value “Michael Jackson”, while in a second table we have similar, but misspelled name “Michal Jackson”. In this case, if we use standard VLOOKUP function, it will not match this two values because it’s looking for the exact match. Using of Fuzzy Lookup solves this problem, by matching columns based on their similarity.

This is very often used when we get a table in Excel imported from some other source, or just manually copied and want to match it with another table with the same data sorted out. In most cases, a first table will have many typing mistakes and misspelled words and would first need to be cleaned manually to be able to Lookup it with our prepared table. This can be very time consuming and that’s the point where Fuzzy Lookup saves precious time. Please note that the matching columns must be formatted as text.

Before being able to do a Fuzzy Lookup, we need to format our data into tables. To do this select cells range, click on Insert tab and choose Table. After we have created two tables, they need to be named in order to be used in Fuzzy Lookup function. This is done by selecting the whole table and entering a name into a Name Box:

Now we have data ready for Fuzzy Lookup: As you can see on previous pictures, we have two tables: the first one (named Sales_Actual) contains data on actual sales per salesperson (Columns “Sales Person” and “Sales Actual”) and the second one contains data of target sales per salesperson (Columns “Sales person” and “Sales Target”).

Once we have formatted our data in Spreadsheet, we can start creating Fuzzy Lookup with two tables created. We can imagine that the first table is imported from some other data source and presents a report of sales per sales person, while the second table contains arranged table created in our Excel file which contains targeted sales for every person. In our example, we want to match these two tables based on column “Sales Person” and create a new table which will have all data aggregated (“Sales Person”, “Sales Actual”, “Sales Target”). Failed download error mac. We can see that the first table has some misspelled names and we want to match them with correct names in the second table based on their similarity.

Let’s now create an example of Fuzzy Lookup and explain how it works. First, we need to select a cell, which will be the first cell of a newly created table, then go to Fuzzy Lookup tab and click on Fuzzy Lookup button. We will get the following window opened on the right side:

To create our table, we have several steps to do:

In the first part of Fuzzy Lookup window, we need to choose two tables which will be matched. In our case left table will be “Sales_Actual” and the right table will be “Sales_Target”. After that, we need to choose the columns which we want to match and click on the button between them. In our example, we want to match tables based on similarity of columns “Sales Person”, so we will choose this column both in Left Columns and Right Columns. Once we do that, the table below will have one new row with these matching columns. In Output columns, we need to check columns that we want to be in a newly generated table: “Sales_Person”, “Sales_Actual” and “Sales_Target”.

There is also an option to choose field “FuzzyLookup.Similarity” which gives the percentage of similarity between two columns. In the end, we can choose Similarity Threshold (0-100%) which tells the function what level of similarity we want to match. After everything is set up, we can click go and get a table based on entered parameters:

As you can see in the picture, the new table is created from the first two chosen. It consists of 3 columns that we choose and column similarity which calculates the similarity of “Sales_Person” columns in the two tables in percentage. For example, “John Bryant” from the first table is matched with “John T. Bryant” from the second table as their similarity is equal to 92%. Also, names “Rachel Williams” and “Harry White” do not have similar values in the second table (based on similarity percentage – 50%), so no value is filled in “Sales Target” column for these two entries.

If we wanted to get these two values also in the matched table, we would have put smaller Similarity Threshold in Fuzzy Lookup window. In the following example, we put it at 0.2 (20%) which means that we want to match all names that have the similarity of 20% or greater. Here is the result:

The output now is the same table, but with included names “Rachel Williams” and “Harry White” because their similarity to “Jason J. Williams” and “Harrison L. White” is greater than 20%.

Are you still looking for help with the VLOOKUP function? View our comprehensive round-up of VLOOKUP function tutorials here.

How to apply fuzzy lookup to find approximate match result in Excel?

Sometimes, we not only need to do exactly lookup, but also want to do a fuzzy lookup as below screenshot shown. Actually, in Excel, the Find and Replace function somewhat help you for fuzzy lookup.

Supposing you have a range A1:B6 as below screenshot shown, you want to fuzzy lookup string “apple” without case insensitive or the “app” in this range. You can apply the Find and Replace feature to handle the job.

Logic

Look up in non-case sensitive

1. Select the range you want to look up, press Ctrl + F keys to enable the Find and Replace function, type the string you want to look up in the Find what textbox.

Excel

2. Click Options to expand the dialog, uncheck Match case option, but check Match entire cell contents option.
Adobe flash palyer for mac download.

3. Click Find All, the strings not in case sensitive have been listed.

Look up part of string

Fuzzy Excel File

1. Select range and press Ctrl + F keys to enable the Find and Replace function, and type the part string you want to look up in the Find what textbox, uncheck Match entire cell contents option, if you need also can uncheck Match case.

2. Click Find All, the cells which contain the string have been listed.

Fuzzy lookup one value or multiple values with a handy tool

If you need to lookup one values approximately or find out all approximate values at the same time, you can use the Fuzzy Lookup feature of Kutools for Excel.

with more than 300 handy functions, makes your jobs more easier.

After free installing Kutools for Excel, please do as below:

Lookup one value approximately

Supposing you want to lookup a value “app” in range A1:A7, but the number of different characters cannot be more than 2, and the number of characters must be large than 1.

1. Click Kutools > Find > Fuzzy Lookup to enable the Fuzzy Lookup pane.

2. In the popping pane, do as these:

1) Select the range you used to find, you can check Specified to fix the searching range.

2) Check Find by specified text checkbox.

Excel

3) Type the value you want to fuzzy search based on in the Text textbox.

4) Specify the searching criteria as you need.
Download modding software for ps4 mac.

3. Click Find button, then click the down arrow to expand the list to view the searching results.

Fuzzy lookup multiple values

Supposing you want to find all approximate values in a range A1:B7, you can do as below:

1. Click Kutools > Find > Fuzzy Lookup to enable the Fuzzy Lookup pane.

2. In the Fuzzy Lookup pane, select the searching range, and then specify the searching criteria as you need.

3. Click Find button to go to the searching result view, then click down arrow to expand the list.

Quickly split data into multiple worksheets based on column or fixed rows in Excel

Supposing you have a worksheet that has data in columns A to G, the salesman’s name is in column A and you need to automatically split this data into multiple worksheets based on the column A in the same workbook and each salesman will be splitted into a new worksheet. Kutools for Excel’s Split Data utility can help you to quickly split data into multiple worksheets based on selected column as below screenshot shown in Excel. Click for 60 days free trial!
Kutools for Excel: with more than 300 handy Excel add-ins, free to try with no limitation in 30 days.

Other Operations (Articles)

Excel Fuzzy Lookup 2016

Find largest negative value (less than 0) in Excel
To find the largest value from a range is very easy for most of Excel users, but how about finding the largest negative value (less than 0) from a data range which is mixed with negative and positive values?

Add Fuzzy Lookup In Excel

Find the lowest common denominator or greatest common factor in Excel
All of us may remember that we are asked to calculate some numbers’ lowest common denominator or greatest common factor when we are students. But if there are ten or more and some big numbers, this work will be complicated.

Excel batch find and replace specific text in hyperlinks
In Excel, you can batch replace a specific text string or a character in cells with the another one by the Find and Replace function. However, in some cases, you may want to find and replace a specific text in hyperlinks, excluding other formats of contents.

Apply the reverse find or search function in Excel
Generally, we can apply the Find or Search function to look for a specific text from left to right in a text string by a specific delimiter. If you need to reverse the find function to look for the word starting at the end of a string as following screenshot shown, how could you do?

The Best Office Productivity Tools

Kutools for Excel Solves Most of Your Problems, and Increases Your Productivity by 80%

  • Super Formula Bar (easily edit multiple lines of text and formula); Reading Layout (easily read and edit large numbers of cells); Paste to Filtered Range..
  • Merge Cells/Rows/Columns and Keeping Data; Split Cells Content; Combine Duplicate Rows and Sum/Average.. Prevent Duplicate Cells; Compare Ranges..
  • Select Duplicate or Unique Rows; Select Blank Rows (all cells are empty); Super Find and Fuzzy Find in Many Workbooks; Random Select..
  • Exact Copy Multiple Cells without changing formula reference; Auto Create References to Multiple Sheets; Insert Bullets, Check Boxes and more..
  • Favorite and Quickly Insert Formulas, Ranges, Charts and Pictures; Encrypt Cells with password; Create Mailing List and send emails..
  • Extract Text, Add Text, Remove by Position, Remove Space; Create and Print Paging Subtotals; Convert Between Cells Content and Comments..
  • Super Filter (save and apply filter schemes to other sheets); Advanced Sort by month/week/day, frequency and more; Special Filter by bold, italic..
  • Combine Workbooks and WorkSheets; Merge Tables based on key columns; Split Data into Multiple Sheets; Batch Convert xls, xlsx and PDF..
  • Pivot Table Grouping by week number, day of week and more.. Show Unlocked, Locked Cells by different colors; Highlight Cells That Have Formula/Name..
  • Enable tabbed editing and reading in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access, Visio and Project.
  • Open and create multiple documents in new tabs of the same window, rather than in new windows.
  • Increases your productivity by 50%, and reduces hundreds of mouse clicks for you every day!
or post as a guest, but your post won't be published automatically.
Loading comment.. The comment will be refreshed after 00:00.




Comments are closed.