Find and select similar cells in Excel

Find Similar Cells is designed to find and select similar cells in Excel quickly and easily. Read the step-by-step instruction on how to use it.

Select a cell in your worksheet that contains the value you are looking for:
Open the Ablebits Tools tab, find the Search group and the Find and Replace icon:
Click the arrow sing below the Find and Replace icon to open a drop-down menu. Go straight to the Max Differences option. Pick the number of characters that may be different between the value in the initially selected cell and the entries you want to find:

Note. The add-in is case-sensitive, i.e. it treats different cases of the same letter as different characters.
Pick the area where the add-in will search for similar cells. You can choose between the current column, the current table, and the active sheet:

Tip. If you need to find identical matches, use the Select by Value add-in.
The add-in will automatically select all similar cells:

Note. The tool scans and selects cells in the entire column/table/sheet, including headers.

Note. Find Similar Cells works with values in the formula bar, not with the ones you can see in your cells. Depending on your cells' format, the values stored in the formula bar may differ from the ones you see, as in the screenshot below:

Sometimes the values shown in the formula bar are different from the ones you see in cells.

Responses

Peter Lamson says:

April 22, 2020 at 1:33 am

i have a 20K row doc, and one of the columns is "address", that has a number of fuzzy dupes. running the 'find replace" "find similar cells in the current column" with max characters of "4" doesn't find any "similar cells" ... i can see them in the first 50 rows, so i must be missing something...

am i using the add-in correctly??

Katerina Bespalaya says:

April 22, 2020 at 8:36 am

Hello Peter,

I have just requested some additional details regarding your task via email. Please email us back and provide the requested info. We'll try to help. Thank you.

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If you have any questions or issues with this add-in, please feel free to post your concerns in the comments area. As soon as we answer, a notification message will be sent to your e-mail. If you do not want to share your thoughts in public, please contact us at support@ablebits.com.

Find and select similar cells in Excel

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Find and select similar cells in Excel

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