VLOOKUP a string within a cell

[dylanjones9]

I have this issue where I am trying to VLOOKUP the contents of a cell in column A, within a cell in another file, in this case a product number. Essentially VLOOKUP a string. For example, if column A on my supporting file has the code of "ABCD" and column B has information of "Not Finished" then I want to bring column B's information into my main file as a new column to then ultimately be able to filter to finished goods or non-finished goods. The main file has a product number, example "055ABCDUL1" where I then want to find that string within the product number to see if it is a finished good or not. 

Take this example table of my supporting file:

Column A	Column B
ABCD	Not Finished
ABAB	Finished
etc...	etc...

and VLOOKUP in Column B's contents to this (my main file):

Product Number	Column B
055ABCDUL1	?
030CABABT15	?
555DHABCDUL45	?
T55DSABAB23NRG	?

Hope that makes sense how I explained it, but what formula tools or join tools etc. that I can use, I am not sure. Thanks for the help!

[Luke_C]

Hi @dylanjones9 

I would use the find and replace tool, attached is an example.

[dylanjones9]

Thank you so much! However just to clarify, I want this to not actually replace the product number with "finished" or "not finished". I need this as an additional column. Is that what will happen here? or will it replace the product number? I cannot get rid of that

[Luke_C · Accepted solution]

Hi @dylanjones9 

If you look in my screenshot you'll see the column is being added. The find and replace tool can either replace a value in an existing field as well as append a column for things that match, making it a useful lookup tool. We are doing the latter here. You can refer to the screenshot and attached workflow's configurations. Hope that helps.

[dylanjones9]

Thanks! I am still fairly new to Alteryx, so this was a huge help for me! Appreciate it

[minhdvo]

Thank you.

It works for my case.