Finding and Highlighting Similar but not Identical Cells in a Colu

[Matt Nichols]

Hello, I am currently working on a very large contact database for a
commercial real estate firm, in which I need to remove duplicate names. I
have successfully removed all of the exact duplicates, but their remains
hundreds of contacts that are duplicates, but are spelled differently (such
as a typo or an added initial).

For example, lets say this is my column:

John Allbright
John A. Allbright
Josh Smith
Ken Black
Ken Blac

I need a function or a macro that will highlight the similar cells, meaning
the first two and last two entries. I need to manually delete one of each
repeat.

Please help!

[Matt Nichols]

Bump, can anyone be of assistance?

"Matt Nichols" wrote:

> Hello, I am currently working on a very large contact database for a
> commercial real estate firm, in which I need to remove duplicate names. I
> have successfully removed all of the exact duplicates, but their remains
> hundreds of contacts that are duplicates, but are spelled differently (such
> as a typo or an added initial).
>
> For example, lets say this is my column:
>
> John Allbright
> John A. Allbright
> Josh Smith
> Ken Black
> Ken Blac
>
> I need a function or a macro that will highlight the similar cells, meaning
> the first two and last two entries. I need to manually delete one of each
> repeat.
>
> Please help!
>

[Dave Peterson]

Whenever I've had to do this kind of think, it's turned into a completely manual
effort.

For instance, I worked with someone named Dave PetersEn. It would be wrong to
delete his name (or mine) because of a one letter difference in names.



Matt Nichols wrote:
>
> Hello, I am currently working on a very large contact database for a
> commercial real estate firm, in which I need to remove duplicate names. I
> have successfully removed all of the exact duplicates, but their remains
> hundreds of contacts that are duplicates, but are spelled differently (such
> as a typo or an added initial).
>
> For example, lets say this is my column:
>
> John Allbright
> John A. Allbright
> Josh Smith
> Ken Black
> Ken Blac
>
> I need a function or a macro that will highlight the similar cells, meaning
> the first two and last two entries. I need to manually delete one of each
> repeat.
>
> Please help!

--

Dave Peterson