Excel - Microsoft Excel Search Function

Description

The Excel SEARCH function returns the position of a specified character or string within a supplied text string. The function is not case-sensitive. 

The function is case-sensitive. If you want to perform a case-sensitive search, use the Excel Find function instead. 

The syntax of the Search function is : 

SEARCH( search_text, within_text, [start_num] ) 

Where the function arguments are: 

If the supplied search_text is found, the Search function returns a number, representing the position of the search_text in the within_text. If the supplied search_text is not found, the Excel #VALUE! error is returned. 

Search Function Examples

The following spreadsheet shows examples of the Excel Search function used to search for various characters in the text string "Original Text". 

The format of the functions are shown in the spreadsheet on the left and the resulting values are shown in the spreadsheet on the right. 

Note that, in the above examples: 

Example 2 - Use of the Search Function to Show Cells Containing Specific Text

The example on the right uses the Excel Search function to highlight cells containing a specific text string. 

The example spreadsheet lists a company's members of staff, in column A and their office skills in column B. The Search function is used in columnn C, to highlight the members of staff who have the skill 'Typing'. 

If the string "Typing" is found, the Search function returns the position of the start of this string within the searched cell. If the string "Typing" is not found, the function returns the #VALUE! error. 

Note that cell B3 contains the string "typing" (in lower case). However, because the Search function is not case sensitive, it still matches this with the search_text "Typing" and so returns the start position 19 (see cell C3). 

You might want to tidy up the results of the Search function in the example above. This can be done using the If and Iserror functions. For example, the formula in cell C1 could be written as 

=IF( ISERROR( SEARCH( "Typing", B1 ) ), 0, 1 ) 

This would return the value 1 if the text "Typing" was found in cell B1 and 0 otherwise. 

Search Function Error

If you get an error from the Excel Search function this is likely to be the #VALUE! error: 

Common Error