Report Link - Matching Text to Multi-Select Text

Hello!

I'm having some trouble with a report link that's matching a text field from "this table" to a multi-select text field in another table.

The problem is that if I select the box to "only include values if they match exactly in both fields," the report link won't catch records from the other table that have multiple selections. But, because some of the values in "this table" have common words/phrases, if I deselect the box, then the report link will grab records from the other table that include multi-select options that simply contain the value from "this table."

eg -- the values in "this table" are "test" and "testing". If I deselect the box to match exactly, the "testing" records will get grabbed by the "test" report link. 

Of course, I'd rather do this with record ID #s, but this is a fairly old app with hundreds of thousands of records. The relationship wasn't created correctly and the number of records is usually too big for queries..

Thanks in advance!
-Harrison