Merging two datasets with unclear identifier in Excel
I typically proceed the following way,


convert to the same case with LOWER() or UPPER();
remove all non-alphanumeric characters with several SUBSTITUTE(), e.g. SUBSTITUTE(A1, ".", "");
trim white spaces TRIM();
extract the first word with LEFT(A1, FIND(" ", A1) - 1);
trim white spaces again;
perform a join on the key that you created.


Often this gives you a decent match.