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Let’s say you want to ensure that a column contains text, not numbers. Or, perhapsyou want to find all orders that correspond to a specific salesperson. If you have no concern for upper- or lowercase text, there are several ways to check if a cell contains text.
You can also use a filter to find text. For more information, see Filter data.
Find cells that contain text
Follow these steps to locate cells containing specific text:
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Select the range of cells that you want to search.
To search the entire worksheet, click any cell.
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On the Home tab, in the Editing group, click Find & Select, and then click Find.
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In the Find what box, enter the text—or numbers—that you need to find. Or, choose a recent search from the Find what drop-down box.
Note: You can use wildcard characters in your search criteria.
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To specify a format for your search, click Format and make your selections in the Find Format popup window.
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Click Options to further define your search. For example, you can search for all of the cells that contain the same kind of data, such as formulas.
In the Within box, you can select Sheet or Workbook to search a worksheet or an entire workbook.
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Click Find All or Find Next.
Find All lists every occurrence of the item that you need to find, and allows you to make a cell active by selecting a specific occurrence. You can sort the results of a Find All search by clicking a header.
Note: To cancel a search in progress, press ESC.
Check if a cell has any text in it
To do this task, use the ISTEXT function.
Check if a cell matches specific text
Use the IF function to return results for the condition that you specify.
Check if part of a cell matches specific text
To do this task, use the IF, SEARCH, and ISNUMBER functions.
Note: The SEARCH function is case-insensitive.
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This is an old question but a solution for those using Excel 2016 or newer is you can remove the need for nested if structures by using the new IFS( condition1, return1 [,condition2, return2] ...)
conditional.
I have formatted it to make it visually clearer on how to use it for the case of this question:
=IFS(
ISERROR(SEARCH("String1",A1))=FALSE,"Something1",
ISERROR(SEARCH("String2",A1))=FALSE,"Something2",
ISERROR(SEARCH("String3",A1))=FALSE,"Something3"
)
Since SEARCH
returns an error if a string is not found I wrapped it with an ISERROR(...)=FALSE
to check for truth and then return the value wanted. It would be great if SEARCH
returned 0 instead of an error for readability, but thats just how it works unfortunately.
Another note of importance is that IFS
will return the match that it finds first and thus ordering is important. For example if my strings were Surf, Surfing, Surfs
as String1,String2,String3
above and my cells string was Surfing
it would match on the first term instead of the second because of the substring being Surf
. Thus common denominators need to be last in the list. My IFS
would need to be ordered Surfing, Surfs, Surf
to work correctly (swapping Surfing
and Surfs
would also work in this simple example), but Surf
would need to be last.
In this example, the goal is to test a value in a cell to see if it contains a specific substring. Excel contains two functions designed to check the occurrence of one text string inside another: the SEARCH function and the FIND function. Both functions return the position of the substring if found as a number, and a #VALUE! error if the substring is not found. The difference is that the SEARCH function supports wildcards but is not case-sensitive, while the FIND function is case-sensitive but does not support wildcards. The general approach with either function is to use the ISNUMBER function to check for a numeric result (a match) and return TRUE or FALSE.
SEARCH function (not case-sensitive)
The SEARCH function is designed to look inside a text string for a specific substring. If SEARCH finds the substring, it returns a position of the substring in the text as a number. If the substring is not found, SEARCH returns a #VALUE error. For example:
=SEARCH("p","apple") // returns 2
=SEARCH("z","apple") // returns #VALUE!
To force a TRUE or FALSE result, we use the ISNUMBER function. ISNUMBER returns TRUE for numeric values and FALSE for anything else. So, if SEARCH finds the substring, it returns the position as a number, and ISNUMBER returns TRUE:
=ISNUMBER(SEARCH("p","apple")) // returns TRUE
=ISNUMBER(SEARCH("z","apple")) // returns FALSE
If SEARCH doesn’t find the substring, it returns an error, which causes the ISNUMBER to return FALSE.
Wildcards
Although SEARCH is not case-sensitive, it does support wildcards (*?~). For example, the question mark (?) wildcard matches any one character. The formula below looks for a 3-character substring beginning with «x» and ending in «y»:
=ISNUMBER(SEARCH("x?z","xyz")) // TRUE
=ISNUMBER(SEARCH("x?z","xbz")) // TRUE
=ISNUMBER(SEARCH("x?z","xyy")) // FALSE
The asterisk (*) wildcard matches zero or more characters. This wildcard is not as useful in the SEARCH function because SEARCH already looks for a substring. For example, it might seem like the following formula will test for a value that ends with «z»:
=ISNUMBER(SEARCH("*z",text))
However, because SEARCH automatically looks for a substring, the following formulas all return 1 as a result, even though the text in the first formula is the only text that ends with «z»:
=SEARCH("*z","XYZ") // returns 1
=SEARCH("*z","XYZXY") // returns 1
=SEARCH("*z","XYZXY123") // returns 1
=SEARCH("x*z","XYZXY123") // returns 1
This means the asterisk (*) is not a reliable way to test for «ends with». However, you an use the the asterisk (*) wildcard like this:
=SEARCH("x*2*b","AAAXYZ123ABCZZZ") // returns 4
=SEARCH("x*2*b","NXYZ12563JKLB") // returns 2
Here we are looking for «x», «2», and «b» in that order, with any number of characters in between. Finally, you can use the tilde (~) as an escape character to indicate that the next character is a literal like this:
=SEARCH("~*","apple*") // returns 6
=SEARCH("~?","apple?") // returns 6
=SEARCH("~~","apple~") // returns 6
The above formulas use SEARCH to find a literal asterisk (*), question mark (?) , and tilde (~) in that order.
FIND function (case-sensitive)
Like the SEARCH function, the FIND function returns the position of a substring in text as a number, and an error if the substring is not found. However, unlike the SEARCH function, the FIND function respects case:
=FIND("A","Apple") // returns 1
=FIND("A","apple") // returns #VALUE!
To make a case-sensitive version of the formula, just replace the SEARCH function with the FIND function in the formula above:
=ISNUMBER(FIND(substring,A1))
The result is a case-sensitive search:
=ISNUMBER(FIND("A","Apple")) // returns TRUE
=ISNUMBER(FIND("A","apple")) // returns FALSE
If cell contains
To return a custom result when a cell contains specific text, add the IF function like this:
=IF(ISNUMBER(SEARCH(substring,A1)), "Yes", "No")
Instead of returning TRUE or FALSE, the formula above will return «Yes» if substring is found and «No» if not.
With hardcoded search string
To test for a hardcoded substring, enclose the text in double quotes («»). For example, to check A1 for the text «apple» use:
=ISNUMBER(SEARCH("apple",A1))
More than one search string
To test a cell for more than one thing (i.e. for one of many substrings), see this example formula.
Excel If Cell Contains Text
Excel If Cell Contains Text Then Formula helps you to return the output when a cell have any text or a specific text. You can check if a cell contains a some string or text and produce something in other cell. For Example you can check if a cell A1 contains text ‘example text’ and print Yes or No in Cell B1. Following are the example Formulas to check if Cell contains text then return some thing in a Cell.
If Cell Contains Text
Here are the Excel formulas to check if Cell contains specific text then return something. This will return if there is any string or any text in given Cell. We can use this simple approach to check if a cell contains text, specific text, string, any text using Excel If formula. We can use equals to operator(=) to compare the strings .
If Cell Contains Text Then TRUE
Following is the Excel formula to return True if a Cell contains Specif Text. You can check a cell if there is given string in the Cell and return True or False.
The formula will return true if it found the match, returns False of no match found.
If Cell Contains Partial Text
We can return Text If Cell Contains Partial Text. We use formula or VBA to Check Partial Text in a Cell.
Find for Case Sensitive Match:
We can check if a Cell Contains Partial Text then return something using Excel Formula. Following is a simple example to find the partial text in a given Cell. We can use if your want to make the criteria case sensitive.
- Here, Find Function returns the finding position of the given string
- Use Find function is Case Sensitive
- IsError Function check if Find Function returns Error, that means, string not found
Search for Not Case Sensitive Match:
We can use Search function to check if Cell Contains Partial Text. Search function useful if you want to make the checking criteria Not Case Sensitive.
If Range of Cells Contains Text
We can check for the strings in a range of cells. Here is the formula to find If Range of Cells Contains Text. We can use Count If Formula to check the excel if range of cells contains specific text and return Text.
- CountIf function counts the number of cells with given criteria
- We can use If function to return the required Text
- Formula displays the Text ‘Range Contains Text” if match found
- Returns “Text Not Found in the Given Range” if match not found in the specified range
If Cells Contains Text From List
Below formulas returns text If Cells Contains Text from given List. You can use based on your requirement.
VlookUp to Check If Cell Contains Text from a List:
We can use VlookUp function to match the text in the Given list of Cells. And return the corresponding values.
- Check if a List Contains Text:
=IF(ISERR(VLOOKUP(F1,A1:B21,2,FALSE)),”False:Not Contains”,”True: Text Found”) - Check if a List Contains Text and Return Corresponding Value:
=VLOOKUP(F1,A1:B21,2,FALSE) - Check if a List Contains Partial Text and Return its Value:
=VLOOKUP(“*”&F1&”*”,A1:B21,2,FALSE)
If Cell Contains Text Then Return a Value
We can return some value if cell contains some string. Here is the the the Excel formula to return a value if a Cell contains Text. You can check a cell if there is given string in the Cell and return some string or value in another column.
The formula will return true if it found the match, returns False of no match found. can
Excel if cell contains word then assign value
You can replace any word in the following formula to check if cell contains word then assign value.
Search function will check for a given word in the required cell and return it’s position. We can use If function to check if the value is greater than 0 and assign a given value (example: 1) in the cell. search function returns #Value if there is no match found in the cell, we can handle this using IFERROR function.
Count If Cell Contains Text
We can check If Cell Contains Text Then COUNT. Here is the Excel formula to Count if a Cell contains Text. You can count the number of cells containing specific text.
The formula will Sum the values in Column B if the cells of Column A contains the given text.
Count If Cell Contains Partial Text
We can count the cells based on partial match criteria. The following Excel formula Counts if a Cell contains Partial Text.
- We can use the CountIf Function to Count the Cells if they contains given String
- Wild-card operators helps to make the CountIf to check for the Partial String
- Put Your Text between two asterisk symbols (*YourText*) to make the criteria to find any where in the given Cell
- Add Asterisk symbol at end of your text (YourText*) to make the criteria to find your text beginning of given Cell
- Place Asterisk symbol at beginning of your text (*YourText) to make the criteria to find your text end of given Cell
If Cell contains text from list then return value
Here is the Excel Formula to check if cell contains text from list then return value. We can use COUNTIF and OR function to check the array of values in a Cell and return the given Value. Here is the formula to check the list in range D2:D5 and check in Cell A2 and return value in B2.
If Cell Contains Text Then SUM
Following is the Excel formula to Sum if a Cell contains Text. You can total the cell values if there is given string in the Cell. Here is the example to sum the column B values based on the values in another Column.
The formula will Sum the values in Column B if the cells of Column A contains the given text.
Sum If Cell Contains Partial Text
Use SumIfs function to Sum the cells based on partial match criteria. The following Excel formula Sums the Values if a Cell contains Partial Text.
- SUMIFS Function will Sum the Given Sum Range
- We can specify the Criteria Range, and wild-card expression to check for the Partial text
- Put Your Text between two asterisk symbols (*YourText*) to Sum the Cells if the criteria to find any where in the given Cell
- Add Asterisk symbol at end of your text (YourText*) to Sum the Cells if the criteria to find your text beginning of given Cell
- Place Asterisk symbol at beginning of your text (*YourText) to Sum the Cells if criteria to find your text end of given Cell
VBA to check if Cell Contains Text
Here is the VBA function to find If Cells Contains Text using Excel VBA Macros.
If Cell Contains Partial Text VBA
We can use VBA to check if Cell Contains Text and Return Value. Here is the simple VBA code match the partial text. Excel VBA if Cell contains partial text macros helps you to use in your procedures and functions.
MsgBox CheckIfCellContainsPartialText(Cells(2, 1), “Region 1”)
End Sub
Function CheckIfCellContainsPartialText(ByVal cell As Range, ByVal strText As String) As Boolean
If InStr(1, cell.Value, strText) > 0 Then CheckIfCellContainsPartialText = True
End Function
- CheckIfCellContainsPartialText VBA Function returns true if Cell Contains Partial Text
- inStr Function will return the Match Position in the given string
If Cell Contains Text Then VBA MsgBox
Here is the simple VBA code to display message box if cell contains text. We can use inStr Function to search for the given string. And show the required message to the user.
If InStr(1, Cells(2, 1), “Region 3”) > 0 Then blnMatch = True
If blnMatch = True Then MsgBox “Cell Contains Text”
End Sub
- inStr Function will return the Match Position in the given string
- blnMatch is the Boolean variable becomes True when match string
- You can display the message to the user if a Range Contains Text
Which function returns true if cell a1 contains text?
You can use the Excel If function and Find function to return TRUE if Cell A1 Contains Text. Here is the formula to return True.
Which function returns true if cell a1 contains text value?
You can use the Excel If function with Find function to return TRUE if a Cell A1 Contains Text Value. Below is the formula to return True based on the text value.
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7 Comments
-
Meghana
December 27, 2019 at 1:42 pm — ReplyHi Sir,Thank you for the great explanation, covers everything and helps use create formulas if cell contains text values.
Many thanks! Meghana!!
-
Max
December 27, 2019 at 4:44 pm — ReplyPerfect! Very Simple and Clear explanation. Thanks!!
-
Mike Song
August 29, 2022 at 2:45 pm — ReplyI tried this exact formula and it did not work.
-
Theresa A Harding
October 18, 2022 at 9:51 pm — Reply -
Marko
November 3, 2022 at 9:21 pm — ReplyHi
Is possible to sum all WA11?
(A1) WA11 4
(A2) AdBlue 1, WA11 223
(A3) AdBlue 3, WA11 32, shift 4
… and everything is in one column.
Thanks you very much for your help.
Sincerely Marko
-
Mike
December 9, 2022 at 9:59 pm — ReplyThank you for the help. The formula =OR(COUNTIF(M40,”*”&Vendors&”*”)) will give “TRUE” when some part of M40 contains a vendor from “Vendors” list. But how do I get Excel to tell which vendor it found in the M40 cell?
-
PNRao
December 18, 2022 at 6:05 am — ReplyPlease describe your question more elaborately.
Thanks!
-
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In this article, we will learn How to Check If Cell Contains Specific Text in Excel.
Scenario :
Identify particular text in a cell or different word in given cells. For example finding the department ID from a database. I think you must have thought to do it manually but time constraint. You are here at the right place to learn How to check if a cell contains specific text.
Generic formula:
The text you are looking for can either be exact or case insensitive. Case insensitive means formula looks for AG can return ag, Ag, AG or aG.
Case insensitive formula:
find_text : text to find
within_text : to find in text
Case sensitive formula:
find_text : text to find
within_text : to find in text
Note:
The above formulas will return True or False. Use the IF function with formula to return YES or NO.
Example :
All of these might be confusing to understand. Let’s understand how to use the function using an example. Here we have some employees to look up by the given department Id. Employee id has name, department id and particular id. Here lookup text is in column D and within text is in Column C.
Use the formula:
As you can see the formula finds aB when you looked for
AB using the Search function. Copy the formula to the rest of the cells using the Ctrl + D or dragging it down from the right bottom (tiny box) of the applied cell.
As you can see we found all the given department id employees using the above method. Now we will check if all cells contain specific text.
Another Example: (Case Sensitive)
Here we have been given a list of Employee Id information in column A and the look up department is «XG». Here we need to find the department «XG» in all cells. «XG» must be exact as there are two different departments that go by «Xg». So check only «XG» in all cells and return «Yes» if found and return «No» If not.
Use the formula:
As you can see First employee doesn’t belong to «XG» so the formula returns «No» using the FIND function. Copy the formula to the rest of the cells using the Ctrl + D or dragging it down from the right bottom (tiny box) of the applied cell.
As you can see there is only one employee in «XG» department. This formula is useful wherever the database contains multiple information of a row in one cell.
Check if cell Matches multiple text
In the above example we lookup one given text in cells. If we have multiple texts then we use the SUMPRODUCT function, This formula returns TRUE/FALSE as per the value found/ Not found.
Use the formula:
Learn more about this formula. Follow this link How to Check if a string contains one of many texts in Excel.
Here are all the observational notes using the above explained formulas in Excel
Notes :
- Use the «find_text» in quotes when using hard coded values. Or else use cell reference as explained in the first example.
- SEARCH is case insensitive function whereas FIND is the case Sensitive dunction.
- Use the IF function, if you want to get the result in required forms like YES/NO or Found/Notfound.
Hope this article about How to Check If Cell Contains Specific Text in Excel is explanatory. Find more articles on calculating values and related Excel formulas here. If you liked our blogs, share it with your friends on Facebook. And also you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook. We would love to hear from you, do let us know how we can improve, complement or innovate our work and make it better for you. Write to us at info@exceltip.com.
Related Articles :
Searching a String for a Specific Substring in Excel : Find cells if cell contains given word in Excel using the FIND or SEARCH function.
Highlight cells that contain specific text : Highlight cells if cell contains given word in Excel using the formula under Conditional formatting
How to Check if a string contains one of many texts in Excel : lookup cells if cell contains from given multiple words in Excel using the FIND or SEARCH function.
Count Cells that contain specific text : Count number of cells if cell contains given text using one formula in Excel.
How to lookup cells having certain text and returns the Certain Text in Excel : find cells if cell contains certain text and returns required results using the IF function in Excel.
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