topic Re: Fuzzy Matching in Alteryx Designer Desktop Discussions

Fuzzy Matching

mfranchino — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 16:15:40 GMT

Hello - I am having an issue with Fuzzy Match.

I have a data source that looks like:

NAME	ADDRESS	NUMBER
AMBERFLORENCE	123 EXAMPLE	1234
TOM BRADY	456 EXAMPLE	4567
MIKE TROUT	789 EXAMPLE	7890

And I have a list of Names that I want to Fuzzy Match for in NAME. For Example, my text looks like

Name

T Brady

Florence

I have the second table as a Text input in my Alteryx flow. I want to Fuzzy Match for the second table values in the first table. Please not my actual data set is much larger, I am just using this as an example.

Thanks for the help!

Re: Fuzzy Matching

jrlindem — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 17:51:05 GMT

@mfranchino

Okay, here’s how I would approach your need, given your example dataset.

To my knowledge Fuzzy Match can’t handle the “AMBERFLORENCE” string since it’s not separated into it’s individual name parts and the Jaro nor Levenshtein methods can look at the string as if it needs to be broken up. (others can correct me if I’m wrong)

But what you can do though is combine methods using Fuzzy Match to accomplish the “TOM BRADY” to “T Brady” match. And then you can use the Contains() function to check the other ones.

My example workflow shows how you can accomplish this. So I think as you expand your dataset out, you’ll need to consider a combination of approaches, but this should get you started in thinking about approaching your need a little differently than just one “fuzzy match.”

Hope this helps, cheers, -Jay

Re: Fuzzy Matching

flying008 — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 03:06:45 GMT

Hi, @mfranchino

Maybe you can try this way: