title: Finding Patterns: Identify the string portion that is common to a group of cells
body: <p>I don't know how to search for this or how to explain without an example.</p>
  
  <p>I'm looking for an excel function that compares cell strings and identifies the portion they have in common. </p>
  
  <p><strong>Conditions</strong></p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Compares 2 or more cells.</li>
  <li>The common string is identified as long as 2 cells share it. *(ie: if comparing more than 2, it's enough to have 2 cells with that string. Not all the compared cells need to have it.) * </li>
  <li>The string has at least 3 or more chars to avoid single characters and pairs being flagged. </li>
  </ul>
  
  <p><strong>Example</strong> </p>
  
  <pre>
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  |  Pattern  | Page URL 1           | Page URL 2     | Page URL 3     |
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  |    test   | example.net/test/    | www.test.com   | www.notest.com |  
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  |   q=age   | another.com?q=age    | test.com/q=age | test.com/q=lol |
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
  
  </pre>
  
  <p>Probably obvious by now, but what I'm trying to achieve/analyze is if there are string patterns that are common to large sets of URLs.</p>
  
  <p><em>(forgive my poor attempt trying to draw a table)</em></p>