Find similar strings in a range

[davedave24]

I'm using the following code to find a string in a range, to see if the user enters a duplicate customer name:

 Dim rngFind As Range
    
    With Workbooks("Aug10").Sheets("Customers").Range("A:A")
        Set rngFind = .Find(textCustomerName.Text, , xlValues)
    End With
 
    If rngFind Is Nothing Then
         'do my stuff
    Else
         'alert the user to a duplicate
    End If

Some of the names contain characters such as periods and hyphens. Others contain spaces. Is there a function to detect similar strings? For example:

A Hart
AHart
A-Hart
A.Hart

ABC
A.B.C.
A-B-C
A B C

 

[davedave24]

edit:

I've switched to a better method

    Dim p As Long
    
    p = Range("A:A").Find(textCustomerName, Range("A1"), xlValues, xlWhole, xlByColumns, xlNext).Row
    If p = 0 Then 'not found
        MsgBox "not found"
    Else
     MsgBox "Found " & textCustomerName & " at row : " & p
    End If

This matches the string exactly, whereas the first method I had picked the string out from the middle of other strings.

Still, would there be a simple way to get it to find similar strings like above?

 

[MarkWalsh]

Just an idea, how about adding another column which strips out all non-alphanumeric characters in the customer name? Then you can search on that column.