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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.

  1. Select a cell in your worksheet that contains the value you are looking for:

    Select a cell to search for similar entries.

  2. Open the Ablebits Tools tab, find the Search group and the Find and Replace icon:

    How to start Find Similar Cells.

  3. 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:

    Select the number of different characters between the initially selected cell and the found ones.

    Note. The add-in is case-sensitive, i.e. it treats different cases of the same letter as different characters.
  4. 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:

    Find similar cells in the current column, the current table, or the active sheet.

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

    Find and select similar cells in Excel.

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.