tools / clean, compare & lookup

Excel Fuzzy Lookup

Match names that are almost the same — typos, abbreviations and spacing differences.

About Excel Fuzzy Lookup

Match company names, product titles or people even when they are spelled slightly differently. Set a minimum similarity and get a score and the matched value for every row so you can review the results.

How to use Excel Fuzzy Lookup

  1. Upload the list to match and the reference list.
  2. Pick the columns and set the minimum similarity (80% is a good start).
  3. Run the lookup, review match scores, and download.

Limitations

  • Everything runs in your browser’s memory, so the practical file size depends on your device. As a rough guide: up to ~50 MB or ~500,000 rows works well on a modern laptop; phones and tablets handle much less.
  • Very large files can make the tab slow or crash. If that happens, split the file first or use a desktop computer.
  • Outputs keep values and formulas’ results but not formatting, charts, images, pivot tables or macros.
  • Fuzzy lookups compare every unmatched value against the lookup table, so very large tables (tens of thousands of rows on both sides) can take a while.

See all limitations

Frequently asked questions

How is similarity measured?

With edit (Levenshtein) distance: 100% means identical, 80% means about one character in five differs.

Exact matches are found first?

Yes, fuzzy matching only runs for values without an exact match.

It is slow on big files — why?

Each unmatched value is compared with every lookup value. Clean obvious differences first or split the file.

Disclaimer: Excel Tools by gumber.ai is a hobby project and is completely free to use. It is provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind. Always double-check results before relying on them, and keep a copy of your original files.

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