Excel MATCH character limit

Question

I use the following formula =INDEX(Dict!A:A,MATCH(A2,Dict!A:A,0),1) but MATCH only works with text below 256 characters. Any way to overcome this limitiatio

Answer 1

There is another way to do this, if you don't mind the messiness of a helper column, and your original formula is not being repeated in subsequent rows (i.e. matching cells A3, A4, A5...). The helper column can of course be hidden to keep DICT looking pretty.

1. Insert (or use) a column (say B:B) next to A:A in DICT!, and populate it with a simple formula "=A1=SHEET1!A$2" (SHEET1 being the name of your source/original sheet), which will populate the column with TRUE and FALSE values, indicating which rows (if any) in DICT match to A2.

2. The match syntax then changes from "MATCH(A2,Dict!A:A,0)" to "MATCH(TRUE,Dict!B:B,0)".

Note: I know this works in principle as I have just done it, but if I added a typo in retrofitting it to the example provided, apologies, however the principle should be easy to follow.