Matching two columns in excel with unalike data

[EricaNHenk]

Good morning!

I want to match the vendor's name from my First Report (Repot 1) to my Second Report. (Report 2) The names are similar, but some are capitalized, and some have shorter names. Any thoughts or suggestions on fastest way of doing this to ensure it's able to find similar matches from Report 2 and override the name as shown in Report 1?  

How it looks

Report 1	Report 2
Abc Brands Inc	ABC Brands Inc. (CA)
Company Llc	Company

How I want it to look:

Report 1	Report 2
Abc Brands Inc	Abc Brands Inc
Company Llc	Company Llc

[JamesCharnley · Accepted solution]

Hi @EricaNHenk 

Dealing with this is more of a process than a quick fix where you'll need to have a good idea of some examples you're trying to match. You'll be able to match some cases with pre-processing steps, such as making case consistent across both datasets with one Alteryx's case functions, which would deal with your capitalisation issues. You can also experiment with the fuzzy match tool after pre-processing, but it's hard to guarantee that you'll match everything you need correctly unfortunately.

[EricaNHenk]

Hi James! Thank you for the quick reply! I did look into the fuzzy match tool, but it didn't seem to match everything I needed from the data set. I will keep playing around with it and see what happens. Thank you again for the advice!