Automation To Find Exact String from Long Text List

[Anthony_Cassel]

I am trying to make a linking automation. Our records in Table 1 do not all exactly match records in Table 2. I am using an Long Text field to create a list of other numbers I would like the automation to look for when linking.

The problem is that using the Find Records function has the options to find a record that "is"(which wont work because im using a list) or "contains"(which will find records that dont exactly match. EX: 2118-1 will match with 2118-1.1 or 2118-11) Is there any ways around this?

[kuovonne · Accepted solution]

The Find records action with "contains" is behaving as designed.

The workaround is to have a delimiter around your search string and to include that delimiter in your search.

For example, it looks like most (but not all) of your IDs are followed by a comma. If you could add a comma directly after all of the IDs, including the last one, you could then search for "contains" and include the comma. 

I actually don't like a comma in this case. I prefer to use two delimiters: one at the beginning and another at the end: [2118-1][2118-1.1][2118-11]. Then I have a formula field that tacks on the delimiters to the ID and use that formula field in the Find records.

[Anthony_Cassel]

I think that would actually work perfectly. Youre a genius. I will give that a go. Thanks a ton.