INTRODUCTION
EXACT function comes under the TEXT category in Excel.
EXACT FUNCTION HELPS US TO COMPARE TWO TEXT STRINGS IN EXCEL. [CONTENT AND CASE].
EXACT FUNCTION is very useful and quite handy if we need to do a strict comparison between two strings.
The comparison is strict i.e. it is case sensitive. (It differs “W” from “w”).
The output of the function is TRUE or FALSE as per the comparison.
It returns True if both texts are exactly same and FALSE if both strings are not same.
*Fonts, Color etc. doesn’t play any role in comparison.
PURPOSE OF EXACT FUNCTION IN EXCEL
EXACT FUNCTION compares two different TEXTS and returns TRUE if both are strictly same or FALSE if any of the TEXT is not same.
The comparison can be of two types.
1. If only the characters and sequence is to be compared. For example Hello is equal to hello
2. In addition to the characters and sequence, case is also to be compared. For example, Hello is not equal to hello because of H.
PREREQUISITES TO LEARN EXACT
THERE ARE A FEW PREREQUISITES WHICH WILL ENABLE YOU TO UNDERSTAND THIS FUNCTION IN A BETTER WAY.
- Basic understanding of how to use a formula or function.
- Basic understanding of rows and columns in Excel.
- Some information about the TEXT IN EXCEL is an advantage for the use of such formulas.
- Of course, Excel software.
Helpful links for the prerequisites mentioned above
What Excel does? How to use formula in Excel?
SYNTAX: EXACT FUNCTION
The Syntax for the EXACT function is
=EXACT( TEXT1, TEXT2)
TEXT1 First Text String
TEXT2 Second Text String
EXAMPLE:EXACT FUNCTION IN EXCEL
DATA SAMPLE
Let us try to check this function using the various examples.
In the following example , we have put four pairs in two columns with simple differences.
We’ll apply the function in the third column and check what is the result.
The example pairs are
WOO wOO
woo woo
w oo woo
WOO woo
STEPS TO USE EXACT FUNCTION
The texts are put in two column i.e. J AND K from row no. 11 to 14.
J column will be compared with the help of EXACT FUNCTION with the K column.
The function used in row 11 is
=EXACT(J11,K11)
and similarly down the line.
This function compares the text stored in J11 with the text stored in K11 AND GIVES THE OUTPUT AFTER COMPARISON as shown in the pictures under CHECK HEADING.
KNOWLEDGE BYTES
COMPARING TWO TEXT STRING WITHOUT EXACT FUNCTION [IF CASE MATCHING IS NOT REQUIRED]
The two strings can be compared even without using the EXACT FUNCTION , if case matching is not required. The operator for comparison is “=”.
If we need to compare the text1 to text2, we can simply write =text1=text2.
TRUE if text1=text2
FALSE if text1 is not equal to text2.
*only content will be matched.
