How to highlight two excel cells contain multiple words in each cell

Question

this may be a bit difficult to explain but i will use the example below

as you can see, the excel sheet has two columns (C and F) I was able to use conditional formatting to highlight the duplicate cells with the green color. I would like to know how to also two different cells that contain multiple words with at-least one word in each cell being the same, as you can see the cells with the yellow color. thanks

Answer 1

You can use a UDF below to compare the values

Public Function comparecells(cell1 As String, cell2 As String) As Boolean

'store words of each cells in two diffrent arrays

    array1 = Split(cell1, " ")
    array2 = Split(cell2, " ")

    'reset the function value
    comparecells = False

    'check each word from one array against the other
    For Each Value1 In array1
        For Each Value2 In array2
            If Value1 = Value2 Then
                'If it finds any match set function return value to true and exit
                comparecells = True
                Exit Function
            End If
        Next Value2
    Next Value1

End Function

Answer 2

Here's a formula for conditional formatting which will return TRUE if at least a word matches.

This is written for cell C2 and it is assumed that it is looking for values in cells F2 to F15.

=NOT(ISERROR(LOOKUP(2^15,SEARCH(TRIM(MID(SUBSTITUTE(" "&C2," ",REPT(" ",99)),{1,2,3}*99,99)),F2:F15,1),F2:F15)))

Adjust it to suit.