How to Search for Text Inside a Cell in Excel

SEARCH finds text regardless of capitalization and supports wildcards. Use it to triage customer support tickets by subject line.

You will learn to

• Find a word regardless of case with SEARCH
• Turn SEARCH into a TRUE/FALSE "contains" test
• Use the * wildcard to match a pattern

How it works

=SEARCH(find_text, within_text) returns the position where find_text starts, ignoring case: =SEARCH("refund","Need a REFUND") returns 8. If the text is not there it returns #VALUE!, so the classic "cell contains" test is =ISNUMBER(SEARCH("refund",B2)).

Unlike FIND, SEARCH understands wildcards: ? matches any single character and * matches any run of characters. =SEARCH("cancel*order",B2) matches "Cancel my order" and "cancellation of order 5521" alike. Use ~ before a wildcard character if you need to search for a literal * or ?.

=ISNUMBER(SEARCH("refund",B2))