Comparing strings in two separate lists

[martin]

I receive a feed every month with accounting data from which I need to
weed out records that are relevant to the group I support. I have a list
of vendors that I keep track of and would like to use this list to weed
out the vendor records from the monthly feed that do not macth the vendors
on the list I keep separately.

I could do a simple look up, but the problem is that the monthly feed
does not always list the vendor names exactly as specified in the list I
keep of vendor names. Sometimes the feed contains more information than
just the vendor name, and sometimes the vendor name misses a few
charachters.

Is there any way to do a procedure using wild-card seacrhes such that I
can automatically delete the records that do not specifically relate to
the list of vendors I keep track of?

If my question is unclear I'll be happy to clarify if someone think they
might be able to help me.

Martin

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[Tom Ogilvy]

There isn't any built in capability to do what you describe. As a point of
reference, think about the spell checker. Sometimes it makes good
suggestions, but other times, even though you think the mistake is obvious,
the spell checker doesn't have a clue. Obviously, there has been a lot of
time spent on that engine. On algorithm is the soundex algorithm. I think
it removes all the vowels from the source and the target.

This was recently posted by Charles Williams:

Author: Charles Williams <Charles....@dial.pipex.com>
Date: 2000/10/02
Forum: microsoft.public.access.3rdpartyusrgrp

Hi Richard,

Depending on what you are looking for try the VBA LIKE operator which allows
wildcard matching,
or look at this tip on John walkenbach's site for Soundex matching

http://www.j-walk.com/ss/excel/tips/tip77.htm

HTH
Charles

============

Here is another reference to a posting by Jon Peltier
(references code written by Harlan Grove)
http://x62.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=668370226

Regards,
Tom Ogilvy

martin <mjoha...@visto.com> wrote in message
news:t6i52hc...@corp.supernews.com...

[Myrna Larson]

Re Soundex: In case anyone is interested, these are the rules:

1. Retain the 1st leter of the word and drop all occurrences of a, e, h, i, o,
u, w, and y in other positions.

2. Assign numbers to letters after the first:

b, f, p, v = 1
c, g, j, k, q, s, x, z = 2
d, t = 3
l = 4
m, n = 5
r = 6

3. If there are two or more adjacent letters with the same code, omit all but
the 1st.

4. Adjust the length to 4 by dropping additional digits past the 4th or
padding with 0's.

Tom is T500, Ogilvy is O241, Myrna is M650, Larson is L625.

On Sat, 20 Jan 2001 09:55:07 -0500, "Tom Ogilvy" <twog...@email.msn.com>
wrote: