VLook-Up Match first 3 characters of one column with another column

Question

I m trying to match a list of words from Column A against another list of words in column B   I only need the first three characters of the words in column A to match the first three characters of the words in column B  I would like the result to be the same value in column B  Is this possible     Here is what I m using   VLOOKUP LEFT A1 3  B 2 B 22  2 TRUE   But  I keep getting  N A  Can anyone help

User · Answer

Something neat     I wanted to look up an  Exact Town ID  based on a  Partial Exact Town Name  BUT although I had the entire town name I was searching against a list of Partial town names  So I First found the  Exact Town Name  based on the part  which was actually a partial name since the  master list  is partial names unfortunately     THEN searched for the  Exact Town ID  based on that Exact town name SO all my Vlookups Index Match-whatevers    were set to EXACT        INDEX county cheatsheet  E 1  E 516 MATCH VLOOKUP LEFT D3 3  amp     county cheatsheet  E 1  E 516 1 FALSE  county cheatsheet  E 1 E 516 0    The lookup of the  first three letters of the partial town name against the list of partial town names is the MATCH VLOOKUP LEFT D3 3  amp     part

User · Answer

VLOOKUP LEFT A1 3  LEFT B 2 B 22 3   1 FALSE    LEFT   truncates the first n character of a string  and you need to do it in both columns  The third parameter of VLOOKUP is the number of the column to return with  So if your range is not only B 2 B 22 but B 2 C 22 you can choose to return with column B value  1  or column C value  2

User · Answer

VLOOKUP Left A1 1  B 2 B 22 2 FALSE    Left is because you are starting the word alphanumeric text from the left  the number  1  which i have placed is after lookup value in this case  A1  is because my search includes the formula for 1st character  If second character is asked it would be  A1 2  quite simple really

User · Answer

IF ISNUMBER SEARCH LEFT H2 3  I2    YES   NO

User · Answer

VLOOKUP LEFT A4 LEN A4 -9   D  F 3 0    I use this if my Lookup Value needs to be truncated because of the format the name is in the Table Array   E g  my Lookup Value is  Eastbay District   but the Table Array list I have only shows this as  Eastbay     Eastbay District  minus 9 characters will result in  Eastbay    I hope this helps

User · Answer

Try using a wildcard like this   VLOOKUP LEFT A1 3  amp     B 2 B 22 1 FALSE   so if A1 is  barry  that formula will return the first value in B2 B22 that starts with  bar

[excel] VLook-Up Match first 3 characters of one column with another column

Examples related to excel

Examples related to vlookup