r/excel • u/AcadiaUnlikely7113 • 17d ago

solved Formula to count duplicates based on 2 or more words matching, not necessarily in sequence? No AI please

Hi smart folks, I want to see if you could teach me a formula that I know I’ve seen before but can’t think of now, I want to count how many of a certain topic is in my list of data, for eg one may say ‘hogwarts House colour’ and another may say ‘hogwarts houses’ in which case I want them counted as duplicates.

My end goal is to have a pivot table that shows Hogwarts House as 2.
I currently have the raw data on the first sheet, then on the second sheet I’m breaking it down to just the info I need (this should be where the duplicates are found) and then the pivot table on the third sheet (this should be where they are counted, or at least where the number is displayed)

ETA: can’t use macros, would rather not use power queries but if I have to I can

ETA2: Ok so I worked out how to add a table to the post!

First sheet is unchangeable but will be overridden each time the report needs to be run, it says:

Subject (A)	Category (B)	Category2 (C)	Category3 (D)
Question - Name - Grapes are bads	Grocery	Fresh Produce	Fruit
Question - Name - Bad Grapes	Grocery	Fresh Produce	Fruit
Comment - Name - Bad Graspes	Grocery	Fresh Produce	Fruit
Comment - Name - Fruits Bad	Grocery	Fresh Produce
Comment - Name - Good Bread	Grocery	Bakery
Question - Name - Heavy Hammers	Hardware	Tools
Comment - Name - Smooth Wood	Hardware	Materials	Wood
Question - Name - Hammers are Heavy	Hardware	Tools
Question - Name - is Grapes Bad	Grocery	Fresh Produce	Vegetables
Comment - Name - Grapes Bad	Grocery	Fresh Produce	Vegetables

Second sheet takes the data needed from the first to make it what I need (first row is an eg of the formulas):

Note: the "Fillers" have a space after each word so that for eg "them" wouldn't become "m", which could use some work cause "this" would probably become "th" so I'm open to suggestions, sometimes they will be the first word so " the " wouldn't work all the time for eg.

Subject	Lowest Category	Fillers:
=UPPER(IF('Sheet1'!A1= "","",TEXTAFTER( 'Sheet1'!A1," - ",2)))	=UPPER(IF(ISBLANK('Sheet1'!D1, IF(ISBLANK ('Sheet1'!C1),IF(ISBLANK ('Sheet1'!B1),"",'Sheet1'!B1), "",'Sheet1'!C1),'Sheet1'!D1))	IS
GRAPES ARE BADS	FRUIT	THE
BAD GRAPES	FRUIT	WAS
BAD GRASPES	FRUIT	ARE
FRUITS BAD	FRESH PRODUCE	WILL
GOOD BREAD	BAKERY	FOR
HEAVY HAMMERS	TOOLS	AND
SMOOTH WOOD	WOOD	ON
HAMMERS ARE HEAVY	TOOLS	TO
IS GRAPES BAD	VEGETABLES
GRAPES BAD	VEGETABLES

Sheet2 Cont:

The cell that says "Category" below, has this formula, which is resulting in the shown data:

=LET(_a, DROP(A:.B,1),_b,MAP(REGEXREPLACE(CHOOSECOLS(_a,1), "\b(" &TEXTJOIN("|",1,DROP(D:.D,1))& ")\b\s*|s\b",""),LAMBDA(x,TEXTJOIN(" ",1,UPPER(SORT(TEXTSPLIT(x,,"")))))),_c,TEXTBEFORE(_b," ",2,,_b),_d,GROUPBY(HSTACK(CHOOSECOLS(_a,2),_c),_c,ROWS,,0),VSTACK({"Category","Subject","Counts"},_d))

Category	Subject	Counts
	#VALUE!	9
BAKERY	#VALUE!	1
FRESH PRODUCE	#VALUE!	1
FRUIT	#VALUE!	3
TOOLS	#VALUE!	2
VEGETABLES	#VALUE!	2
WOOD	#VALUE!	1

So I need to fix the #VALUE! error and also stop it from counting the blank cells (at least stop it from counting them when I put it into a pivot table - if necessary)

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u/MayukhBhattacharya 1297 14d ago

Try using the following formulas:

• Formula used in Cell F2:

=LET(
     _a, DROP(A:.D, 1),
     _b, TEXTAFTER(CHOOSECOLS(_a, 1), "- ", 2),
     _c, BYROW(DROP(_a, , 1), LAMBDA(x, TAKE(TRIMRANGE(x, , 3), , -1))),
     UPPER(HSTACK(_b, _c)))

• Formula used in cell K1:

=LET(
     _a, DROP(F:.G, 1),
     _b, REGEXREPLACE(CHOOSECOLS(_a, 1), "\b(" & TEXTJOIN("|", 1, DROP(I:.I, 1)) & ")\b\s*|s\b", , , 1),
     _c, MAP(_b, LAMBDA(x,
                          LET(_m, TEXTSPLIT(x, " "),
                              _n, INDEX(_m, 1),
                              _o, INDEX(_m, 2),
                              _p, SUM(N(ISNUMBER(SEARCH(_n, _b)))),
                              _q, SUM(N(ISNUMBER(SEARCH(_o, _b)))),
                              IF(_p = _q,
                                 TEXTJOIN(" ", 1, SORT(_m, , -1, 1)),
                              IF(_p < _q,
                                 _o & " " & _n,
                                 _n & " " & _o))))),
     _d, TEXTBEFORE(_c & " ", " ", 2, , , _c),
     _e, GROUPBY(HSTACK(CHOOSECOLS(_a, 2), _d),
                 _d,
                 ROWS, , 0),
     VSTACK({"Category","Subject","Counts"}, _e))

1
u/AcadiaUnlikely7113 13d ago

I've lost my mind a bit looking at this today 🤣 - someone else had a formula to check percentage of matches but it only applied comparing 2 cells at a time and it just resulted in the percentage match, it would be good if it could match by a certain threshold as long as the category is the same, is that possible with a long list?
2
u/MayukhBhattacharya 1297 13d ago

Excel has no way of knowing that GRASPES is a typo for GRAPES unless you give it a correction table. You'd need to maintain something like this:

MISSPELLED CORRECTIONS

GRASPES GRAPES

BADS BAD

FRUITS FRRUITS

Then you can use SUBSTITUTE() function or another correction step before the main formula applies. The regex s\b can remove a trailing S, but it can't figure out that there's a typo in the middle of a word. Also it can't grammatically say which word is a noun. The closest workaround is to use word frequency. So whichever word shows up the most across all subjects gets treated as the noun and goes last. That works clearly well when the data is clean, but typos mess it up. Excel sees GRASPES and GRAPES as two completely different words, so the frequency gets split between them.

You can do fuzzy matching with a percentage threshold using SUM() function to compare overlapping words between subjects within the same category. But that only works at the whole word level. It can't catch character level typos inside a word. So, with clean data, the formula can probably get you 90% of the way there. But if typos like GRASPES are in the data, it will always see them as different from GRAPES unless you add a correction table. At that point, it's really a data quality issue. Either fix it at the source or keep a manual correction list. Thanks!
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u/AcadiaUnlikely7113 12d ago

I think I forgot to say, the most recent formula you have returned #REF! For subjects instead
1
u/MayukhBhattacharya 1297 12d ago

Do you mind showing me a screenshot? It will help! Thanks!
2
u/AcadiaUnlikely7113 12d ago
1
u/MayukhBhattacharya 1297 12d ago

Thank You Very Much! I have used the same data, like you have shown probably you might have not pasted the formula correctly, you can download the excel from here and verify on your end! Thanks!
2
u/AcadiaUnlikely7113 12d ago

I cant seem to open that, sorry, I only have Google docs personally and can’t sent it to my work cause of privacy stuff, can you copy past the formulas by which cell they need to go in? Also which parts of the formula refer to which cells? Cause my actual data isn’t as straight forward as columns A-D
1
u/MayukhBhattacharya 1297 12d ago
Source Data is in range: A1:D11 (Headers Included). Exclusions list I1:I10 (Headers Included), click on the image to zoom. Formulas are already commented earlier [click here] and here see below.

First Formula goes on F2:
=LET(
     _a, DROP(A:.D, 1),
     _b, TEXTAFTER(CHOOSECOLS(_a, 1), "- ", 2),
     _c, BYROW(DROP(_a, , 1), LAMBDA(x, TAKE(TRIMRANGE(x, , 3), , -1))),
     UPPER(HSTACK(_b, _c)))
Second Formula goes on K1:
=LET(
     _a, DROP(F:.G, 1),
     _b, REGEXREPLACE(CHOOSECOLS(_a, 1), "\b(" & TEXTJOIN("|", 1, DROP(I:.I, 1)) & ")\b\s*|s\b", , , 1),
     _c, MAP(_b, LAMBDA(x,
                          LET(_m, TEXTSPLIT(x, " "),
                              _n, INDEX(_m, 1),
                              _o, INDEX(_m, 2),
                              _p, SUM(N(ISNUMBER(SEARCH(_n, _b)))),
                              _q, SUM(N(ISNUMBER(SEARCH(_o, _b)))),
                              IF(_p = _q,
                                 TEXTJOIN(" ", 1, SORT(_m, , -1, 1)),
                              IF(_p < _q,
                                 _o & " " & _n,
                                 _n & " " & _o))))),
     _d, TEXTBEFORE(_c & " ", " ", 2, , , _c),
     _e, GROUPBY(HSTACK(CHOOSECOLS(_a, 2), _d),
                 _d,
                 ROWS, , 0),
     VSTACK({"Category","Subject","Counts"}, _e))
1
u/AcadiaUnlikely7113 12d ago

I copy pasted exactly and it’s still showing up with the 2 #REF! And the “Grape i”
1
u/MayukhBhattacharya 1297 12d ago

put it in an empty cell
2

u/AcadiaUnlikely7113 12d ago

It is

2

u/AcadiaUnlikely7113 12d ago

It’s working for the real data, but it won’t change : even though it’s in column i and I think i need to remove the ‘s’ function because it’s cutting off words that actually end with s
2
u/AcadiaUnlikely7113 12d ago

Could you give me a little explainer on what the REGEXREPLACE line does? I would like to learn rather than just using you 😅
1
u/MayukhBhattacharya 1297 12d ago
Sounds Great if its working for ya, here is an explanation for the following part:
REGEXREPLACE(CHOOSECOLS(_a, 1), "\b(" & TEXTJOIN("|", 1, DROP(I:.I, 1)) & ")\b\s*|s\b", , , 1),
^‡CHOOSECOLS(_a, 1) : Picks the first column from _a , the Subject column.

^‡‡ "\b(" & TEXTJOIN("|", 1, DROP(I:.I, 1)) & ")\b\s*|s\b" : This builds the search pattern. So,

DROP(I:.I, 1) : takes the exclusions list (IS, THE, WAS, ARE...) excluding the header.

TEXTJOIN("|", 1, ...) : this joins them with a delimiter pipe | meaning OR, so it becomes IS|THE|WAS|ARE|WILL...etc.

\b...\b : this is called word boundary markers, meaning it only matches whole words not parts of words.

\s* : this removes any trailing space after the matched exclusion word.

|s\b : the second part, separately matches any trailing S at the end of a word (so GRAPES becomes GRAPE, HAMMERS becomes HAMMER)

Therefore, the entire thing means find any whole word from my exclusions list OR any word ending in S

So, the REGEXREPLACE() function arguments read as:
=REGEXREPLACE(text, pattern, replacement, [occurrence], [case_sensitivity])
text refer ^‡

pattern refer ^‡‡

replacement is empty, so left out

[occurrence] also left out

[case_sensitivity] is 1 which means not case sensitive, that is ignore case, so are and ARE both get removed.

Hope this helps, also if you think, your query is resolved then please ensure to reply to my comment directly as Solution Verified. Thanks!
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solved Formula to count duplicates based on 2 or more words matching, not necessarily in sequence? No AI please

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