Accessing files with specific name to provide a solution

Hi. I have a column full of names. So for example


Dogs
Alsatian
Alsatian_Young
Alsatian_Old
Corgi
Poodle
Labrador
Labrador_Black
Labrador_White

I also have a folder with file names as follows

Alsatian, Corgi, Poodle, Labrador

I need to retrieve some information from these files and it will go in the adjacent column. My problem is that in my list I have some Dog names which have more specific descriptions so for example the Alsatian_Young, but the thing to note is that the information for Alsation_Young must come from the "Alsatian.xls" file in the same way that the Labrador_White information exists in the "Labrador.xls" file. Therefore it is not as straightforward as just looping through all the files in the folder because I have these additional names in the columns that sometimes have to reference the same file.

Any ideas what a working solution could be?

Thanks for your help.

Yes. I could see how that might work. I was thinking that since the file name is always just the Dog name, eg "Labrador", then I could initially do a comparision for each cell in the Dog column with every other cell below it, given the column below starting in A1

Labrador
Labrador_White
Labrador_Black

I could do a match so that if any of the cells below A1 contained the word labrador it would store "Labrador" in the adjacent cell, B2 and B3 would register "Labrador" which could be used to reference the file name.

What function can check if a cell contains a given word?

Also how can I tell it to open a particular file with the filename given by a variable? So if I search the contents in B2 and find "Labrador" and store that in a variable "Name" then I want to search for a file called "Name.xls".

Well sometimes they have up to a maximum of two identifiers. So worst case scenario there would be

Labrador_White_Young

but otherwise nothing different to that.

Yes that's right.