Vlookup or Index/Match only matching the first 8 characters.

Hi Everyone,

Not sure if this is possible or I will have to amend a folder filepath macro elsewhere.

I have 8 digit references in column A (cell A2 in the non-working formula below) and on another sheet ("Link2") I want to use the 8 digit cell reference in cell A2 to look up against just the first 8 digits of "link2" column A to get the content in the cell in column B and ultimately use this as a hyperlink.

If this were possible it would be something like this :
=INDEX(Link2!B:B,(MATCH(A2,(left,Link2!A:A,8)0))) but it obviously doesn't work. I could use a vlookup nearest match but I can't have any margin for error.

Is there anyway to do this ? I can't think of how this would be possible using any form of count formulas.

Over to anyone who can think outside the box...

Many thanks