the MOST

While I was teaching a class on Logical functions, a student asked if it was possible to make a logical function case sensitive.  I was stumped.  Fortunately, my boss found the answer while the class moved on to other skills.  Hooray Ben!

Ben’s answer - the EXACT function.  EXACT evaluates whether two text strings (numbers and letters entered in a cell) are exactly the same, including the case.  It does not evaluate formatting.  EXACT returns TRUE if the text strings match exactly, including case, and FALSE, if they are not an exact match.

Syntax
=EXACT(text1,text2)
The argument text1 will be a value (text, date, number, etc) or a cell that contains a value.  The argument text2 will be a value or cell containing a value as well.  If text1 is exactly the same as text2, including case, then the function will return TRUE.  If not, it will return FALSE.

Example
In cell C2, we have the word Apples, with the first letter capitalized.  If one of the cells in the list in column A matches Apples exactly, then we want to return TRUE.  If not, we want to return FALSE.

In cell B3 I entered =EXACT($C$2,A3).  The first argument, C2 contains the value I want to compare the other values against.  I added the dollar signs to make it an absolute cell reference.  The second argument, A3, is the cell I want to check to see if it matches C2.  I did not make this an absolute cell reference because I want to copy this formula down the column to evaluate the other items in the list, and need for the cell references to change.

Here’s is what it will look like when I copy the formula down and get the results for all of the items in the list.

You may not find Exact to be very helpful on its own, but it can be nested into other functions.  It can replace an argument that returns TRUE or FALSE.  If you would like to learn more about nesting functions together, you can watch the Nesting Logical Functions video.

If you don’t have much experience using formulas and functions in Excel, I recommend reading the Five Formulas and Functions Essentials post.