Link records by matching on %like% values

[Peio_Inc]

Hi all,

I have two tables that I’d like to link to each other via automation. As the data is flowing in via integrations from 2 different data sources with no common ID, I need to try to map those values.

For example
In table A I have a field with Name “Abc”
In table B I have a primary field with Name “abcd”

Now I would like to link those two tables by matching those values that are closest to each other. In Excel that would be done with a “LIKE” operator. How would you approach this in Airtable? Is it possible to do it in automations? And if not, via scripting?

[Alexey_Gusev]

Hi,

That’s interesting question. Such topic, or ‘close to it’ already discussed here, several times. No “standard solution”, each data type better matched with different approach. Try to search Levenshtein (Levenstein) to find the disscussion.
Airtable has Deduper extension which lets you to find fuzzy matches. But it designed to find duplicates and then allow you to merge records, choosing field to stay or delete. It’s not so helpful for hundreds of matches, and for linking them.

In my scripts, I have solution that can compare names from different sources, ignoring case mismatch and different words order, third names and punctuation marks. Solution can choose among different values in table and choose the “closest” to given. Comparing values in tables, script can set links, including multi-linking and worksquite fast with a 50k+ tables.
Problem is that is three different scripts, written for different purpose, and I don’t think they can be combined.

thanks for the clue with Excel - now I interested how that’s formula works.