Find formula cell excel

Функция НАЙТИ (FIND) в Excel используется для поиска текстового значения внутри строчки с текстом и указать порядковый номер буквы с которого начинается искомое слово в найденной строке.

Что возвращает функция

Возвращает числовое значение, обозначающее стартовую позицию текстовой строчки внутри другой текстовой строчки.

Синтаксис

=FIND(find_text, within_text, [start_num]) — английская версия

=НАЙТИ(искомый_текст;просматриваемый_текст;[нач_позиция]) — русская версия

Аргументы функции

• find_text (искомый_текст) — текст или строка которую вы хотите найти в рамках другой строки;
• within_text (просматриваемый_текст) — текст, внутри которого вы хотите найти аргумент find_text (искомый_текст);
• [start_num] ([нач_позиция]) — число, отображающее позицию, с которой вы хотите начать поиск. Если аргумент не указать, то поиск начнется сначала.

Дополнительная информация

• Если стартовое число не указано, то функция начинает поиск искомого текста с начала строки;
• Функция НАЙТИ чувствительна к регистру. Если вы хотите сделать поиск без учета регистра, используйте функцию SEARCH в Excel;
• Функция не учитывает подстановочные знаки при поиске. Если вы хотите использовать подстановочные знаки для поиска, используйте функцию SEARCH в Excel;
• Функция каждый раз возвращает ошибку, когда не находит искомый текст в заданной строке.

Примеры использования функции НАЙТИ в Excel

Пример 1. Ищем слово в текстовой строке (с начала строки)

На примере выше мы ищем слово «Доброе» в словосочетании «Доброе Утро». По результатам поиска, функция выдает число «1», которое обозначает, что слово «Доброе» начинается с первой по очереди буквы в, заданной в качестве области поиска, текстовой строке.

Обратите внимание, что так как функция НАЙТИ в Excel чувствительна к регистру, вы не сможете найти слово «доброе» в словосочетании «Доброе утро», так как оно написано с маленькой буквы. Для того, чтобы осуществить поиска без учета регистра следует пользоваться функцией SEARCH.

Пример 2. Ищем слово в текстовой строке (с заданным порядковым номером старта поиска)

Третий аргумент функции НАЙТИ указывает позицию, с которой функция начинает поиск искомого значения. На примере выше функция возвращает число «1» когда мы начинаем поиск слова «Доброе» в словосочетании «Доброе утро» с начала текстовой строки. Но если мы зададим аргумент функции start_num (нач_позиция) со значением «2», то функция выдаст ошибку, так как начиная поиск со второй буквы текстовой строки, она не может ничего найти.

Если вы не укажете номер позиции, с которой функции следует начинать поиск искомого аргумента, то Excel по умолчанию начнет поиск с самого начала текстовой строки.

Пример 3. Поиск текстового значения внутри текстовой строки с дублированным искомым значением

На примере выше мы ищем слово «Доброе» в словосочетании «Доброе Доброе утро». Когда мы начинаем поиск слова «Доброе» с начала текстовой строки, то функция выдает число «1», так как первое слово «Доброе» начинается с первой буквы в словосочетании «Доброе Доброе утро».

Но, если мы укажем в качестве аргумента start_num (нач_позиция) число «2» и попросим функцию начать поиск со второй буквы в заданной текстовой строке, то функция выдаст число «6», так как Excel находит искомое слово «Доброе» начиная со второй буквы словосочетания «Доброе Доброе утро» только на 6 позиции.

A few days back I had a huge spreadsheet in which I had to find out the cells containing formulas. Initially, I was totally clueless about how this task can be done.

But later after doing some Google searches, I got a few ideas on how I can effortlessly identify the formula cells in excel.

And today to share my experiences with you guys, In this post I will throw some light on a few methods that can help you to find out formula cells in your spreadsheets.

So here we go:

Method 1: Using ‘Go To Special’ Option:

In Excel ‘Go To Special’ is a very handy option when it comes to finding the cells with formulas. ‘Go to Special’ option has a radio button “Formulas” and selecting this radio button enables it to select all the cells containing formulas.

Later you can change the formatting or background color of the selected cells to make them stand out from the rest. Below is the step by step instructions for accomplishing this:

1. With your excel sheet opened navigate to the ‘Home’ tab > ‘Find & Select’ > ‘Go To Special’. Alternatively, you can also press ‘F5’ and then ‘Alt + S’ to open the ‘Go to Special’ dialog.

2. Next, in the ‘Go to Special’ window select the ‘Formulas’ radio button. After checking this radio button you will notice that few checkboxes (like Numbers, Errors, Logical, and Text) are enabled, these checkboxes signify the return type of the formulas.

So, if you select the ‘Formulas’ radio button and only check the ‘Numbers’ checkbox then it will just search the Formulas whose return type is a number. Here in our example, we will keep all of these return types checked.

3. After this click the ‘Ok’ button and all the cells that contain formulas get selected.

4. Next, without clicking anywhere on your spreadsheet change the background color of all the selected cells.

5. Now your formula cells can be easily identified.

Method 2: Using a built-in Excel formula

If you have worked with excel formulas then probably you may be knowing that excel has a formula that can find whether a cell contains a formula or not. The formula that I am talking about is:

=ISFORMULA(reference)

Here ‘reference’ signifies the cell position which you wish to check for the presence of a formula.

For example: If you wish to check the cell ‘A2’ for the existence of a formula then you can use this function as

=ISFORMULA(A2)

This function results in a Boolean output i.e. True or False. True signifies that the cell contains formulas while False tells that cell doesn’t contain any formulas.

Method 3: Using a Macro for identifying the cells that contain formulas:

I have created a VBA Macro that can find and color any cells that contain the formula in the total used range of the Active sheet. To use this macro simply follow the below procedure:

1. Open your spreadsheet and hit the ‘Alt + F11’ keys to open the VBA editor.

2. Next, navigate to ‘Insert‘ > ‘Module‘ and then paste the below macro in the editor.

Sub FindFormulaCells()
For Each cl In ActiveSheet.UsedRange
If cl.HasFormula() = True Then
cl.Interior.ColorIndex = 24
End If
Next cl
End Sub

3. For running this formula press the “F5” key.

4. This Macro will change the background colour of all the formula containing cells and thus makes it easier to identify them easily.

Recommended Reading: How to add a Checkbox in excel

Purpose 

Return value 

Usage notes 

=FIND("p","apple") // returns 2
=FIND("z","apple") // returns #VALUE!

=FIND("a","Apple") // returns #VALUE!
=FIND("A","Apple") // returns 1

=ISNUMBER(FIND("p","apple")) // returns TRUE
=ISNUMBER(FIND("z","apple")) // returns FALSE

=FIND("x","20 x 30 x 50") // returns 4

=FIND("x","20 x 30 x 50",5) // returns 9

=IF(ISNUMBER(FIND(substring,A1)), "Yes", "No")

The two formulas FIND and SEARCH in Excel are very similar. They search through a cell or some text for a keyword or character. Once found, they return the number of characters, at which the keyword starts. Let’s learn how to use them and explore the differences of the two formulas.

How to use the FIND formula

The formula returns the number of the character, at which your search term starts. If your text can’t be found, it’ll return a “#VALUE” error.

Structure of the FIND formula

The structure of the FIND formula is quite simple (the numbers are corresponding to the image on the right-hand side):

1. SEARCH TERM: The first part of the formula is the text you look for.
2. WITHIN TEXT: The cell or text you want to search your “SEARCH TERM” in.
3. START NUMBER: This argument is optional. If you don’t want to start searching at the beginning of the text, fill in the number larger than 1, otherwise just type 1 or leave it blank.

If you just want to know, if your text can be found within another cell, you might want to go with the following formula. B2 contains the text or character you search for and B3 is the cell you search in:

=IFERROR(IF(FIND(B2,B3)>0,”Value found”,””),”Value not found”)

Please note the following comments:

• FIND is case-sensitive. That means, it matters if you use small or capital letters.
• You can also search for numbers within another number. For example: =FIND(1,321)This formula returns 3 because the number 1 is the third character of 321.
• You can’t use wildcard criteria (“*” or “?”) with the FIND formula.
• Please refer to this article if you want to know more about the IF formula and to this article for more information about the IFERROR formula.

Examples for the FIND formula

Let’s try some examples.

Example 1: Find the first occurrence

The “default” usage of the FIND formula is to return the number of characters, at which a text first occurs within another text. Let’s say you have the text “Hello there” and want to know, at which position you have an “o”. In such case, you write the following formula (example number 1 in the Excel workbook you can download at the end of this article).

=FIND(“o”,”Hello there”)

The return value is 5.

Example 2: Find the first occurrence after the third character

Another example: You want to know the position of “e” after the third character (example number 2 in the example workbook).

=FIND(“e”,”Hello there”,3)

The return value is 9.

Example 3: Find the second occurrence

Now you want to know the position of the second occurrence of “e” in “Hello there”.

=FIND(“e”;”Hello there”;FIND(“e”;”Hello there”)+1)

This formula works as follows. The second FIND formula returns the position of the first occurrence of “e” in “Hello there” which is 2. This is used as the START NUMBER (+ 1 because you want to start counting after the first “e”) for the first FIND formula.

Example 4: Find the last occurrence

Finding the last occurrence of a string within a text is a little bit more complicated. You use SUBSTITUTE and LEN. The complete formula is like this:

=FIND(“tempreplacetext”;SUBSTITUTE(“Hello there”;”e”;”tempreplacetext”;SUM(LEN(“Hello there”)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(“Hello there”;”e”;””)))/LEN(“e”)))

In order to understand the formula better, let’s start in the middle with the part SUM(LEN(“Hello there”)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(“Hello there”;”e”;””)))/LEN(“e”)))

This part of the formula determines the number of “e” in “Hello there”. It replaces “e” in “Hello there” and the difference in the two versions (with and without e – “Hello there” and “Hllo thr”) is the number of “e”s.

The whole part SUBSTITUTE(“Hello there”;”e”;”tempreplacetext”;SUM(LEN(“Hello there”)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(“Hello there”;”e”;””)))/LEN(“e”))) replaces the last “e” by “tempreplacetext”. Now you just put this into the FIND formula and get the position of “tempreplacetext”.

If you want to use this formula, replace all “e”s by your cell reference for the SEARCH TEXT and all “Hello there” by the cell reference to your WITHIN TEXT.

Replace text enclosed by brackets

A last example for the FIND formula: You want to know what is written between two brackets. In such case, you can also use the FIND formulas in combination with the MID formula.

=MID(“Hello (you) there”,FIND(“(“,”Hello (you) there”)+1,FIND(“)”,”Hello (you) there”)-FIND(“(“,”Hello (you) there”)-1)

The MID formula returns some part of text from a (longer) text. It has three arguments:

1. The initial, complete text.
2. The starting character for the text you want to get.
3. The length (in number of characters) of text you want to extract.

In our example above, the first FIND formula provides the character you want to start at. In our case that’s the first opening bracket (+1 because you want to start one character later). The second and third FIND formulas determine the length by

How to use the SEARCH formula

Like the FIND formula in Excel, SEARCH also returns the position of a text within another text.

Structure of the SEARCH formula

The SEARCH formula is very similar to the FIND formula. It has exactly the same arguments and works the same way.

Because of the, the structure is as follows:

1. The SEARCH TERM is the text or character you search for.
2. WITHIN TEXT contains the text you search in.
3. The START NUMBER is optional and defines the number of character, after which Excel should start searching.

Yes, you are right – these arguments are exactly the same like in the FIND formula. But there is a major difference: SEARCH does not regard lower and upper case: It is not case sensitive. FIND on the other hand is case-sensitive and regards upper and lower cases.

Examples for the SEARCH formula

The examples work exactly the same way like for the FIND formula. You only have to replace “FIND” by “SEARCH”. Because of that, we just show the summary below. If you want to know more, either scroll up to the “FIND”-examples or download the example workbook below.

Troubleshooting

The error message “#VALUE!” comes up most often for the FIND and SEARCH formulas. If you receive a “#VALUE!” error, please check the following possibilities.

• Make sure your SEARCH TERM can be found. If it can’t be found, you’ll receive the #VALUE! error.
• The last argument, the START NUMBER, is larger than the number of characters of in your WITHIN TEXT argument.
• You haven’t provided the last argument although you wrote the comma. For instance =SEARCH(“b”,”abc”,).
• Please check, if your SEARCH TERM and WITHIN TEXT have the same format. You can’t search for a letter or text in a number cell.

Difference between FIND and SEARCH

The first and major difference between FIND and SEARCH:

FIND is case-sensitive. SEARCH is not case-sensitive.

That means, FIND regards capital and small letter whereas SEARCH doesn’t.

How to remember which is which? I use the mnemonic:

• FIND finds exactly what you look for.
• Searching for something also searches for roughly what you look for.

I admit, it’s not the best mnemonic. Please let me know, if you have a better one!

There is also a second difference between FIND and SEARCH: You can use SEARCH with wildcard criteria within the SEARCH TERM.

• “?” stands for a single character. Example: =SEARCH(“?b”,”abc”)
• “*” matches any sequence of characters. =SEARCH(“*b”,”abc”)
• If you want to search exactly for ? or *, write a tilde in front of them. Example: =SEARCH(“~*”,”ab*c”)

Differences between FIND and FINDB as well as SEARCH and SEARCHB

Maybe you have noticed that there is also a slightly different version of the two formulas in Excel. If you add a “B” to the formulas, you can still use them the same way. So what is the difference?

FINDB and SEARCHB provide support for more complex languages. The definition by Microsoft is:

SEARCHB counts 2 bytes per character only when a DBCS language is set as the default language. Otherwise SEARCHB behaves the same as SEARCH, counting 1 byte per character.

According to Wikipedia DBCS stands mainly for the Asian languages Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Please feel free to download all the examples shown above in this Excel file.

Click here and the download starts immediately.

This post will guide you how to use Excel FIND function with syntax and examples in Microsoft excel.

Description

The Excel FIND function returns the position of the first text string (sub string) within another text string.

It can be used when you want to get the position of a sub string inside another text string. so it will return a number that indicates the starting position of sub string that you are searching in another text string.

The FIND function is a build-in function in Microsoft Excel and it is categorized as a Text Function.

Note: The FIND Function is case-sensitive.

The FIND function is available in Excel 2016, Excel 2013, Excel 2010, Excel 2007, Excel 2003, Excel xp, Excel 2000, Excel 2011 for Mac.

Syntax

The syntax of the FIND function is as below:

= FIND(find_text, within_text,[start_num])

Where the FIND function arguments are:

• Find_text -This is a required argument. The text  or substring that you want to find. (The string in the Find_text argument can not contain any wildcard characters)
• within_text -This is a required argument. The text string that is to be searched
• start_num-This is an optional argument. It will specify the position in within text string where the search will start. If you omit start_num value, the search will start from the first character of the within_text string, in other words, it is set to be 1 by default.  So you can use the Excel Find function to look for the specified text starting from the specified position.

Note:

• The Find function will return the position of the first character of find_text in within_text argument.
• If there are several occurrences of the find_text within another text string, it only return the position of the first occurrence.
• If the find_text is an empty string, the position of the first character in the within_text is returned.
• If the find_text string is not found in within_text, it will return the Excel #VALUE! Error.
• If start_number value is not greater than 0, it will return the #VALUE! Error value.
• As the FIND function is case-sensitive. If you want to do a search that is case-insensitive , you can use the SEARCH Function.
• The FIND function does not support wildcard characters, so if you want to use wildcard characters to find string, you can use SEARCH function in excel.

Excel Find Function Examples

The below example will show you how to use Excel FIND Text function to find the position of a sub string within text string.

#1 To get the position of sub string “how” in cell B1, just using formula:

 =FIND("how",B1,1).

When you look for the text “how” in the Cell B1, it will return 6, which is the position of the first character of find_text “how” within the Cell B1.

#2 To get the position of sub string “how”in cell b1, starting with the third character, using formula:

=FIND("how",B1,3)

In the above example, it specified the start_num value as “3“, so you will get the position of the first character “h” of  the searched string “how”  within the value in Cell B1 when the starting position is 3. it returns 6.

The Example 1The search will start from the third character of the value in Cell B1.

#3 Finding “excel” string  in Cell B1, using the following Find formula:

=FIND("excel",B1,1)
=FIND("excel",B1,3)

when you set the starting position as 1, it will return the position of the first “excel” string in the value of Cell B1.

When you set the starting position as 3, it will return the position of the second “excel” string in the value of Cell B1. The search will start from the third character of the value in Cell B1.

#4 Searching an empty string in Cell B1, using the following Find formula:

=FIND("",B1,1)

In the above example, when you look for an empty string in Cell B1 with the starting position as 1, and it will return the position of the first character of the within_ text (the value of Cell B1).

#5 Searching “word” text in Cell B1, using the following Find formula:

=FIND("word", B1,1)

In the above example, when you look for the text “word” in Cell B1 and the string position is 1, it will return a #VALUE! error, As the searched string “word” is not found in Cell B1.

#6 Searching for a text as “excel” in Cell B1 and the starting position is a negative number.

=FIND("excel",B1,-1)

If the starting position is not greater than 0, it will return a #VALUE! Error.

#7 Searching for a string as “EXCEL” in Cell B1, using the following formula:

=FIND("EXCEL",B1,1)

As the FIND function in excel is case-sensitive, when you look for the string “EXCEL” in Cell B1, the searched string “EXCEL” is not found, the function will return a #VALUE! error.

Frequently Asked Questions

Question 1:  the FIND function returns a #VALUE error when it do not find the searched text within another string.  I want to know if there is another excel function in combination with the find function to handle the error message to return the actual value, such as: -1 or throwing others exceptions via returning values, like: -1,0 or FALSE.

Answer: As mentioned above, the FIND function is case-sensitive, and it can be combined with the ISNUMBER function and IF function to create a new IF excel formula as follows:

=IF(ISNUMBER( FIND("excel",B1)), FIND("excel",B1), "not found")

The FIND function will locate the position of the searched text “excel” within Cell B1, and the ISNUMBER function will check the result returned by the FIND function if it is a number, if TRUE, then return TRUE, otherwise , returns FALSE. then the IF will check the Boolean value returned by ISNUMBER function, If TRUE, then returns the numeric position returned by the second FIND function, If FALSE, returns “not found” string.

If you want a case-insensitive match and you can use the SEARCH function instead of the FIND function in the above formula:

=IF(ISNUMBER( SEARCH("excel",B1)), SEARCH("excel",B1), "not found")

Question 2: I want to extract a sub string from a string that separated by wildcard characters. I tried to use the below FIND formula to handle it. but it returned a #VALUE error message. Could you please help to check the below formula I used:

=RIGHT(B1,FIND("~**",B1))

Answer: you can use the following formula:

=TRIM(RIGHT(B1,Len(B1) - FIND("**",B1)-1))

The find function will return the position of the first wildcard (**) character within a string in Cell B1. you need subtract the numeric position returned by FIND function from the length of the string in Cell B1 to get the length of sub string to the right of the wildcard character(asterisk). then the RIGHT function extracts the rightmost characters based on the length of sub string.

or you can use another formula to achieve the same result as follows:

=MID(B1,FIND("**",B1)+2,255)

Question 3: I am trying to extract the first word from another text string separated by space character. but it always return a #VALUE error message. I think it should be use the FIND function in combination with another function, such as: left function. but I still don’t know how to combine with those two functions to extract the first word.

Answer: right, you can create a excel formula that uses the FIND function and LEFT function. and you can use the below formula:

=IFERROR(LEFT(B1, FIND(" ",B1)-1),B1)

The find function returns the position of the first space character in the text string in Cell B1. the Formula “=FIND(” “,B1)-1 returns the numbers of the first word as the second arguments of the LEFT function.

If the text string in Cell B1 just only contains one word, then the find function will return #VALUE error. to handle this error, you need to use the IFERROR function, if the find function is not find the space character, then return the text string in B1. in other words, it just contains only one word in Cell B1.

Question 4: I am trying to extract an email address from a text string in Cell B1. how to write a excel formula to achieve the result.

Answer: you can use a combination of the TRIM function, the LEFT function, the SUBSTITUTE function, the MID function, the MAX function and the REPT function to create a complex excel formula to extract email address from a string in Cell B1.

=TRIM(RIGHT(SUBSTITUTE(LEFT(B1,FIND (" ",B1&" ",FIND("@",B1))-1)," ", REPT(" ",LEN(B1))),LEN(B1)))

=TRIM( MID( SUBSTITUTE(B1, " ", REPT(" ",255)), MAX(1, FIND( "@", SUBSTITUTE(B1, " ", REPT(" ",255))) -50),255))

Question 5: I am trying to get the first name from a full name separated by a comma character. how to use a excel formula to extract the first name from a name as: “Last name, First name” format.

Answer: you can use a combination with the RIGHT function, the LEN function and the FIND function to create a excel formula to get the first name from a name. just using the following formula:

=RIGHT(B1,LEN(B1) - FIND(", ",B1)-1)

• Excel SEARCH function
  The Excel SEARCH function returns the number of the starting location of a substring in a text string.The syntax of the SEARCH function is as below:= SEARCH  (find_text, within_text,[start_num])…
• Excel Find function
  The Excel FIND function returns the position of the first text string (substring) from the first character of the second text string.The FIND function is a build-in function in Microsoft Excel and it is categorized as a Text Function.The syntax of the FIND function is as below:= FIND  (find_text, within_text,[start_num])…
• Excel ISERROR function
  The Excel ISERROR function returns TRUE if the value is any error value except #N/A. The ISERROR function is a build-in function in Microsoft Excel and it is categorized as an Information Function. The syntax of the ISERROR function is as below: = ISERROR (value) …
• Excel ISNUMBER function
  The Excel ISNUMBER function returns TRUE if the value in a cell is a numeric value, otherwise it will return FALSE.The syntax of the ISNUMBER function is as below:= ISNUMBER (value)…
• Excel RIGHT function
  The Excel RIGHT function returns a sub string (a specified number of the characters) from a text string, starting from the rightmost character.The syntax of the RIGHT function is as below:= RIGHT (text,[num_chars])…
• Excel LEN function
  The Excel LEN function returns the length of a text string (the number of characters in a text string).The LEN function is a build-in function in Microsoft Excel and it is categorized as a Text Function.The syntax of the LEN function is as below:= LEN(text)…
• Excel MID function
  The Excel MID function returns a sub string from a text string at the position that you specify. The MID function is a build-in function in Microsoft Excel and it is categorized as a Text Function. The syntax of the MID function is as below: = MID (text, start_num, num_chars) …
• Excel SUBSTITUTE function
  The Excel SUBSTITUTE function replaces a new text string for an old text string in a text string.The syntax of the SUBSTITUTE function is as below:= SUBSTITUTE  (text, old_text, new_text,[instance_num])…
• Excel LEFT function
  The Excel LEFT function returns a sub string (a specified number of the characters) from a text string, starting from the leftmost character.The LEFT function is a build-in function in Microsoft Excel and it is categorized as a Text Function.The syntax of the LEFT function is as below:= LEFT(text,[num_chars])…
• Excel REPT function
  The Excel REPT function repeats a text string a specified number of times.The REPT function is a build-in function in Microsoft Excel and it is categorized as a Text Function.The syntax of the REPT function is as below:= REPT  (text, number_times)…

More FIND Formula Examples in Excel

• Split Text String by Specified Character
  you should use the Left function in combination with FIND function to split the text string in excel. And we can refer to the below formula that will find the position of “-“in Cell B1 and extract all the characters to the left of the dash character “-“.=LEFT(B1,FIND(“-“,B1,1)-1).…

• Split Text String by Line Break
  When you want to split text string by line break in excel, you should use a combination of the LEFT, RIGHT, CHAR, LEN and FIND functions. The CHAR (10) function will return the line break character, the FIND function will use the returned value of the CHAR function as the first argument to locate the position of the line break character within the cell B1.…
• Split Text and Numbers in Excel
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Many a time, it may have happened with you that you have a lot many formulas in your excel worksheet and you want to find only those cells that contain formulas. One way is to go to each and every cell one by one and then check if it contains any formula or not. But don’t you think that it is a quite time-consuming and irritating activity? Yes, it is. Indeed, there are many easy ways that you can use to find the cells containing formula at one click. In this blog, we would unlock this technique to find formula cells in Excel. There are multiple ways to achieve it.

As mentioned in the introduction paragraph of this blog, there are mainly three ways to find all the cells that contain formula in it. Let me list those down first.

1. Using the ISFORMULA function
2. Using ‘Conditional Formatting’ Feature
3. ‘GoTo Special’ Functionality

Sample Example Data

Below is the screenshot of containing sales data in a table format region wise. In this dataset, there are few cells that contain formula in it. The goal here is to find all the cell containing the formula.

Let us now start learning each of the methods one by one.

Find Formula Cells Using ISFORMULA function in Excel

In this method, we would learn how to use an excel pre-provided formula to find all the cells containing a formula in it. The formula about which I am talking about is – ‘ISFORMULA‘.

The formula nomenclature itself makes it clear that this function/formula would check if it IS a FORMULA.

Syntax and Attributes: The formula syntax goes like this: =ISFORMULA(reference); where ‘Reference’ means the reference of the cell or range.

Return Values: This formula returns ‘TRUE‘ if the reference cell contains a formula and ‘FALSE‘ in vice versa situation.

Let us now use this function in our example. Follow the below steps:

Select the exact number of cell range as that of the original data table somewhere in the worksheet. In my example, since I have the data table with 6 rows and 5 columns, therefore, I have selected exactly 6 rows and 5 columns at some other place in Excel (A5:E13). Refer to the screenshot below:

Make sure that the starting cell of the selection should be the top-left cell (in our example it is A8). As can be seen from the screenshot above, we started the selection from cell A8 and therefore, cell A8 is the active cell now.

Now, just type the formula =ISFORMULA(A1) and press Ctrl+Enter. As a result, you would notice that Excel enters the same formula in all the cells in the selected cell range.

Consequently, the formula returns TRUE and FALSE as a return value. This depicts that the reference cells corresponding to the cells with TRUE contain a formula. And the reference cells corresponding to the cells with FLASE do not contain any formula.

Using Conditional Formatting to Find Formula Cells

This method is an extension of the above method. One of the limitations of the above method is that the method does not provide the required information (that whether a cell contains a formula) in the cell itself. As you can see, the information that the cell E4 has a formula in it is provided in the cell E11 (as the return value TRUE).

To mitigate this, we can use the conditional formatting functionality along with the ISFORMULA function to find determine a formula cell (in that cell itself). Follow the procedure below:

Firstly, select the cell range (A1 to E6).

Now, navigate to the ‘Home’ tab. There you would find an option called ‘Conditional Formatting’.

Click on this feature, and select the option ‘New Rule’ from the list of a drop-down menu.

Under the ‘Select a Rule Type’ section, click on the last option ‘Use a formula to determine which cell to format’ and enter the formula =ISFORMULA(A1) in the input box available.

Next, click on the option ‘Format’ to open the ‘Format Cells’ dialog box. Under the tab named ‘Fill’, and select the cell fill color of your choice from the list of available colors (I have selected the Yellow color).

Finally, click on the ‘OK’ button to activate the format cell and then exit the ‘Conditional Formatting’ dialog box by clicking on the ‘OK’ button.

As a result, you would notice that the excel highlights all those cells that have a formula in it.

Using GoTo Special Functionality

This is yet another method to find all the cells containing the formula. This is a widely used method among all the other methods as no formula is needed to use this function. Follow the undermentioned steps-

Firstly, select the dataset table

Now press Ctrl+G key combinations on your keyboard to open the “GoTo” dialog box.

In the “GoTo” dialog box, click on the “Special” option as highlighted in the screenshot below.

The “GoTo Special” dialog box would open.

From the list of available options, click on the radio button “Formulas” and then click on the “OK” button to exit this dialog box.

As a result, you would notice that all the formula cells get selected.

Finally, just change the fill color of all those cells by choosing the color of your choice from the list of available colors. Refer to the screenshot below

You can even do any kind of formatting to these cells, like changing the font size, color, etc.

This brings us to the end of this blog. Share your views and comments in the comment section below.