Excel find not working

Symptoms

When you try to use the Find utility to search for data in an Excel workbook, you may receive an error message similar to the following:

Microsoft Excel cannot find the data you’re searching for. Check your search options, location and formatting.

Cause

This issue may occur if you are searching for text, values, or formatting that is contained in a filtered list, and the filtering criteria prevents the text, values, or formatting from being displayed.

Workaround

To work around this issue, set the filter criteria to Show All on each worksheet in your workbook before you perform the search. To do this, follow these steps:

1. Start Excel, and then open the workbook that you want to search.

2. On the Data menu, point to Filter, and then click Show All.

3. Repeat step 2 for each sheet in the workbook.

4. Perform the search.

Status

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in Excel 2003.

Summary:

This informative post will help you to know why your Excel find and replace not working. Besides this, the post covers some best fixes to resolve “Microsoft Excel Cannot Find the Data You’re Searching For” error occurs mainly when Excel find and replace doesn’t work.

While working with huge Excel data, it’s too difficult and time consuming to search for any specific information. Well to simplify this task Excel has provided its user with find and replace features.

However, through the ‘Find’ option user can easily fetch any of their worksheet’s data whereas with the ‘replace’ feature you can make quick modifications to your worksheet.

Undoubtedly, these features simplify the working style in Excel a bit easier but what if Excel find and replace stops working.

Don’t know how to tackle such a situation in Excel? Not to worry…!

Let’s take a quick glance to uncover the unsolved mystery of Excel find and replace not working issue.

What Happens When Excel Find And Replace Won’t Work?

Problem 1:

At the time using the Find utility to search for any specific Excel workbook data, you may start getting an error message like:

Microsoft Excel cannot find the data you’re searching for.

Check your search options, location and formatting.

Problem 2:

In the Microsoft Excel application when you select the Replace option from the dialog box of Find and Replace for replacing data already existing in your Excel worksheet. At that time, you may be stuck with the following error message:

Microsoft Excel cannot find a match.

It’s ok to get this “Microsoft Excel cannot find a match” error when the text that you need to replace actually won’t exist in the worksheet.

But if the replacing text exists in your worksheet and still it showing “Microsoft Excel cannot find a match” then it’s a problem.

Why Won’t Find And Replace Work In Excel?

The problem of find and replace not working in Excel occur if the following condition gets true.

• Find and replace don’t work also when the sheets of your Excel workbook is password protected. This means find and replace won’t work in a protected worksheet.
• May be your active Excel cells does not have the matching data you are looking for.
• You forgot to tap the Find All or Find Next option before clicking the Replace option within the dialog box of Find and Replace.
• Excel Find and replace not working issue also encountered when you are looking for the values or text contained within the filtered list.

Try the following fixes to resolve Microsoft Excel Cannot Find the Data You’re Searching For error or to make your Excel find and replace option work again.

Fix 1# Mistaking In The Cells Selection

Chances are high that you may have highlighted more than 2 cells but searching for some other cells.

Excel find a utility to search through the entire cells of your worksheet if only 1 cell is clicked.

If more than 2 cells are selected or highlighted then the ‘find’ option will look for your item in only those two selected cells.

Fix 2# Use Replace All

Note: try this option only when you need to replace all the matches present in the Excel workbook.

• Within your Excel worksheet press CTRL + H from your keyboard.
• This will open the dialog box of Find and Replace. After that, type the text within the box of Find What box which you require to replace.

• Within the box of Replace with, just type the text which you need to replace with the original one.
• Hit the Replace All option.

Fix 3# Use Find and Replace

• Within your Excel worksheet press CTRL + H from your keyboard.
• This will open the dialog box of Find and Replace. After that, type the text within the box of Find What box which you require to replace.
• Within the box of Replace with, just type the text which you need to replace with the original one.

• Hit the Find Next option.

• For replacing the text, tap to the replace option and automatically Excel will search the next instances of your text that needs to be replaced.
• IF you want to skip the text replacing at some specific places then tap to the Find Next option.

Fix 4# Solve Excel Filter Criteria Issue

Maybe the issue is actually in the Excel filter criteria. Some of your Excel data is kept hidden with the use of Excel filter criteria. You need to unhide all your data first then only perform the find and replace option.

Follow the steps to do this:

• Start your Excel application and open the Excel workbook in which you want to perform the search operation.
• From the menu bar of your Excel worksheet tap the Data>Filter option> Show All option.

• Repeat step number 2 in each of our Excel worksheets.
• Now run the find and replace utility.

Fix 5# Remove Password From Protected Excel Sheet

If your Excel find and replace not working then check whether your Excel sheet is password protected. If it is protected then find and replace option won’t work.  So, you need to unprotect Excel worksheet first.

For complete guidance to perform this task, you can get help from this post: How To Lock And Unlock Cells, Formulas In Microsoft Excel 2016?

Fix 6# Repair Corrupt Excel Worksheet

Sometimes find and replace won’t work also when the data you are looking for actually goes missing from your Excel worksheet.

The reason behind this Excel data loss can be your Excel file corruption.

To extract data from corrupt Excel worksheet try the MS Excel Repair tool. This is the best tool to fix any type of issue and also able to recovers entire Excel data including the charts, worksheet properties cell comments, and other important data easily.

* Free version of the product only previews recoverable data.

If in case your Excel file gets corrupted, damaged, or starts showing errors then in this case make use of the MS Excel Repair tool, It is a professional recommended solution to repair corrupt Excel file. This is a unique tool that repairs multiple files at one time and restores entire data in the preferred location. This supports all versions of Excel files and compatible with both Windows as well as Mac OS.

Steps to Utilize MS Excel Repair Tool:

Wrap Up:

Hopefully now you have acquired much knowledge on how to fix Excel find and replace not working issue.

Or if you know some other ways to fix Microsoft Excel Cannot Find the Data You’re Searching For error then don’t hesitate to share it with us.

Apart from this, you are facing any other issues meanwhile handling Excel worksheet then ask your queries in our Facebook and Twitter accounts.

See all How-To Articles

This tutorial demonstrates some fixes for when Find and Replace is not working in Excel.

Common Issues and Fixes for Find Errors

In Excel, the Find & Replace feature makes the searching process faster and easier when you want to find specific information in a worksheet. But sometimes this feature can stop working.

Nonexistent Text

The most common reason for the error is that the string you’re searching doesn’t exist. Say you have a data set with prices in Columns A, B, and C.

If you enter text that doesn’t exist in the workbook in the Find what box and click Find All, Excel displays an error message.

It’s normal to get the error message above if you search for nonexistent text. But if you try to find and replace a text string that does exist in the workbook and you still get this error message, try the following solutions.

Replace All Without Find All

If you forget to click the Find All or Find Next option before clicking the Replace All or Replace option, it results in the error message: Microsoft Excel cannot find a match.

To fix this mistake, first click the Find All (or Find Next) button, and then press the Replace All (or Replace).

Wrong Cell Selection

If it’s only one cell selected, Excel goes through the entire worksheet.

If more than one cell is selected, then the Find option from the Find & Replace feature is only applied to those cells.

So, to fix this problem, check that you made the right cell selection or just select a single cell in order to apply the Find option to the entire worksheet (orworkbook).

Protected Sheet

Another possible reason why Find doesn’t work is that your sheet is protected. In a protected sheet, you can find text, but you won’t be able to make any changes with Replace.

To fix this problem, in the Ribbon, go to Review and click on Unprotect Sheet icon.

In the dialog box, enter the password to unlock it.

As a result, you should be able to use the Find & Replace feature on your worksheet.

Corrupted Excel Worksheet

Sometimes the Find & Replace feature won’t work because the data you are looking for is actually missing from the worksheet due to Excel file corruption. In this case, the best thing you can do is to repair the file using the Restore function.

See also: Using Find and Replace in Excel VBA and Find & Replace Question Marks and Asterisks

The Find function in Excel is a text function that returns the position of a set character on a cell item. As the function is tricky to use, many new Excel users experience issues in running the Find function.

The Find function is case-sensitive in nature. This means you need to match the case of the character you want the function to return the value for. If you do not match the case, you might encounter the #VALUE! Error. There are other rookie errors as such that can create problems when using the Find function.

Use Proper Syntax

If you do not use proper syntax while entering the FIND function, you will run into the #NAME? error code. The formula for the FIND function is written in the following format:

=FIND(find_text, within_text, [start-num])

You can either refer to a cell or enter a text in place of “find_text”. If you’ve entered text, be sure to enter it inside double quotes. Similarly, be sure to use commas to separate your arguments.

In this example, we set the find_text value as I. As we did not enclose it inside double quotes, Excel triggered the #NAME? error.

To solve this, enter your text in double-quotes. The FIND function returns 1 as the letter “I” appears only once in “Image”.

Recheck Your Formula

You could have entered an incorrect value in the find_text section. If Excel cannot find the value you’ve requested in the set cell location, it will return the #VALUE! error.

Check your formula to see if you’ve correctly entered your values. If you’ve used a different case in your formula, change it to match the case.

We’ve entered the find_text value as “A” in the grid above. The FIND function will look for this character in A2, which is “apple”. As the case for the letter “a” is different, the FIND function will not work.

You can solve this error by changing the case for find_text to “a”.

Change start-num Value

You can add a start-num value at the end of your FIND formula. This specifies a position in the character Excel can start looking for your set value. If you’ve set a start-num value that comes after your set character, Excel will not register that character. 

For example, we’ve entered our formula to find the number of times the letter “a” has been repeated in apple. However, we’ve set the start-num value to 2, which comes after “a” in the value. Excel cannot locate “a” in the remaining text, so it returns the #VALUE! error. 

To fix this, we can change the start-num value to 1. However, you can choose not to enter 1 at all as Excel sets the start-num value to 1 by default.

Use Find Command in Excel

If you’re having trouble using the FIND function in Excel, you can always find the Find command. You can configure the Find command to Match case and Match entire cell contents with the value you enter. 

Similarly, you can adjust where Excel looks for your set value. You can run the Find command within your sheet or the entire workbook. You can also choose if the command searches by rows or columns in formulas, values, or comments.

1. On your workbook, hit Ctrl + F.
2. Click on the Options>> button.
   
3. Enter your value in the Find what section and configure the search settings accordingly.
   
4. Select Find All.

The Find command will locate all cells that match your set value.

Repair Office

You could be dealing with corrupt or missing program files if non of the solutions apply. You can perform an online repair on the Office app as your last resort to the Find function not working in Excel.

1. Open Settings (Windows + I).
2. Head to Apps > Apps & features.
   
3. Enter Microsoft Office in the search bar.
4. Click the three-dot menu and select Modify.
   
5. Choose Online repair > Repair.