excel: Find value in column where cells contain multiple values separated by commas and return value from an adjacent column

Question

I have two tables of data, call them table 1 and 2. In table 1 there is a long list of reference numbers. Each reference number has its own cell.

In table 2 I have the exact same reference numbers; however, in table 2 these reference numbers may or may not share that cell with another reference number. See below. The bottom three reference numbers in table 1 all share the same cell and are separated by a comma always.

Imagine table 1 and 2 are on separate tabs of the same workbook.

table 1 and 2

On the work sheet for table 1, I am trying to bring back the month found adjacent to the reference number in table 2. I am trying to take the value in table 1, search it in table 2, and return the month so that I get this result:

result in column b of table 1

I would like to avoid delimiting the values in the shared cells of table 2.

Thanks in advance for your help!

Answer 1

If your reference number are unique, you can get by with doing a wildcard vlookup Assume you have a range in columns F and G where your reference numbers and months are. In Range A:B you want the values.

Essentially you are looking up like this. If my value A1 is in column F and it matches a substring get the value from G

So you would use this formula in B1

=VLOOKUP(CONCATENATE("*", A1, "*"),$F$1:$G$6,2, FALSE)

what this is doing is, get the value from A1, and match the range of F:G where the first column CONTAINS A1, get the value from the corresponding G column From there copy paste the formula for the rest of the cells in B column