I just had to invent something quickly  for a co-worker today.

He needed to check a long list of phrases in two different columns to see if there were any matches.
e.g. “pasta carbonara” vs “Spaghetti Carbonara” , this should be a match.

So without further ado, here’s the VBA function to do it.

Function PartialMatch(Cell1 As Range, Cell2 As Range)
    ' Convert both cells' contents to lowercase
    Dim sC1 As String: sC1 = LCase(Cell1.Value)
    Dim sC2 As String: sC2 = LCase(Cell2.Value)
    ' Split the words by space into an array
    Dim C1() As String: C1 = Split(sC1, Chr(32))
    Dim C2() As String: C2 = Split(sC2, Chr(32))
    
    ' Assume that there's no match
    Dim sResult As String: sResult = "No match"
    
    ' Loop through the words in both cells
    For Each sWord1 In C1
        For Each sWord2 In C2
            ' Compare the words to each other
            If (sWord1 = sWord2) Then
                sResult = "Match"
            End If
        Next sWord2
    Next sWord1
    ' Return the result
    PartialMatch = sResult
End Function

Say you have A1 = “pasta carbonara” and B1 = “Spaghetti Carbonara”.
Insert =PartialMatch(A1,B1) in C1 and the function will return “Match”.
Apply some conditional formatting for =”Match” and =”No match” to highlight.