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How to find cell with text in Excel

December 13, 2022
2.4K Views

When using Excel, we come across a lot of strange scenarios including the question of how to find cell with text in excel. One of those circumstances is looking for a specific text string within a cell. The Find and Replace approach in Excel, which is the most popular one, is the first thing that springs to mind when we say we want to search for a specific text in the worksheet. However, Ctrl + F can only search within the text you are looking for. So, for instance, you might want the result in the following cell to be TRUE or FALSE if the cell includes specific terms. Ctrl + F thus ends there.

Here is the process to demonstrate how to find cell with text in excel.

How to find cell with text in excel online, 2016 and 2019:

We've seen this query pop up frequently in Excel forums. The FIND function was the first formula that sprang to mind.

The position of the supplied text values in the string can be obtained using the FIND function. Therefore, if the FIND method returns any integer, we can infer whether or not the cell contains text.

Consider the facts below as an illustration.

Three sentences are found in three separate rows of the data mentioned above. We now need to look for the word Best in each cell. Therefore, use the FIND function.

The text we need to find is mentioned in the find text argument.

Choose the entire sentence, or cell reference, for the within text option.

Closing the bracket and pressing the Enter key do not require the last parameter.

The term best is so defined in two statements. The #VALUE! error value in cell B2 demonstrates that cell A2 does not contain the text value best.We can also enter the outcome in words rather than figures. We must employ the IF condition in this case.

Therefore, if the value best is discovered, we have provided the result as Text Found in the IF condition. If not, we have indicated Not Found as the outcome.However, there is a problem with this because even if we provided the result as Not Found, if the text is still missing, we receive the error value as #VALUE!Therefore, no one wants an incorrect value in their Excel spreadsheet. To get around this incorrect value, we must encapsulate the formula using the ISNUMERIC function.

How to find cell with text using search function in excel:

To find a certain text within a string in Excel, we can also utilize the SEARCH function in place of the FIND function. The SEARCH function and the FIND function both have the same syntax.

Supply the “find_text” as “Best.”

The within text is a reference to our cell.

A #VALUE error value is even returned by the SEARCH function! if the search term best cannot be located. As we saw previously, the formula needs to be enclosed by the ISNUMERIC or IFERROR functions.

How to draw attention to the cell that contains a specific text value in excel:

If formulas are not your thing, you can just highlight the cell containing a certain term. For instance, conditional formatting in Excel must be used to highlight the cell containing the term best.Pick the data cells first, then choose Conditional Formatting > New Rule.

Choose Format only cells that contain under New Rule.

Choose Specific Text from the first dropdown menu.

The equal sign and double quotes around the text we're looking for are entered in the formula section as ='best.

Select the formatting style by clicking FORMAT after that.

Press OK. All of the cells that include the term best will be highlighted.In Excel, we can search for a certain text using a number of methods.

Note: This above written article is an attempt to show you how to find cell with text in excel online, 2016 and 2019, in both windows and mac.You just need to have a little understanding of how and which way things work and you are good to go. With having this basic knowledge or information of how to use it, you can also access and use different other options on excel or spreadsheet. Also, it is very similar to Word or Document. So, in a way, if you learn one thing, like Excel, you can automatically learn how to use Word as well because both of them are very similar in so many ways. If you want to know more about WPS Office, you can download WPS Office to access, Word, Excel, PowerPoint for free.                                    

15 years of office industry experience, tech lover and copywriter. Follow me for product reviews, comparisons, and recommendations for new apps and software.