function needed to compare lists

I have a worksheet, xxx, with a list of names in column A and text information for some of the names in column B. In a second workbook I also have a list of names in column A. In column B of the 2nd workbook I need to be able to get the text information from the 1st list if the names are the same in the 2 workbooks.

I tried the following in column B of the second workbook:

=IF(XXX.xls!$A$1:$A$10=A1,XXX.xls!$B$1:$B$10,0)

This only sees to work if the 2 lists of names are the exact same the problem is the 2 lists of names may be slightly different.

Thanks for your help!

Excel isn't very good at mind reading. It needs an exact match. Try to find a way to get them to be an exact match or select a portion of each to be an exact match. For example
LEFT(XXX!A1:A10,6) looks at the 6 leftmost characters. Or
IF(ISNUMBER(SEARCH(A1, abcdef)... returns true if abcdef is anywhere within your cell.
Hard to know exactly what you need without some example data.

ChemistB