Fuzzy Lookup Add-In for Excel

Microsoft makes available an add-in for Excel called, 'Fuzzy Lookup Add-In for Excel' which is available for download here. The add-in will allow you compare data from two different tables, running a fuzzy search for entries from one column in another column from a second table. The add-in can be configured to return results of a fixed percentage of similarity.

After the setup.exe file is downloaded and run, when you reopen Excel you should see a new tab named, ''Fuzzy Lookup". Clicking on the icon on this tab will bring up a pane on the right.

In order to use Fuzzy Lookup you'll need to have at least two tables defined on the spreadsheet. In order to set an array of data as a table, select a range of cells and press CTRL + L.

In this example we have two tables - one with a list of the official names of famous old time ball players, and other with the nicknames for those players. We can find which nicknames match which official names by selecting one table as the Left Table and the second table as the Right Table. Confirm that the add-in sets a matching column from the two tables.

In a case like this one set the similarity quite low - around 0.1. If you click 'Go' the add-in will generate a list showing which names from the Left Table have fuzzy search hits in the Right Table, and show the degree of similarity between the two.