Finding a string in Excel cells

L

Lord Luv A Duck

Not sure if this is an Excel problem or a general Microsoft products
"feature", but here goes:-

I've inherited a HUGE spreadsheet with 6 figures of cells in total(!)
and I'm told that some have been highlighted for query or error with
"???" in the cell (in addition to other text in that cell).

Trouble is, as soon as I do "find" with the "?" character, it seems to
ignore it, as if ? is some reserved character.

Does anyone have any idea how I can get round this?

Ta!
 
D

Dave Peterson

The ? character is used as a wild card character (any single character).

To search for the actual ? character, use: ~? (tilde, question mark)

Same for * (wildcard for any number of characters): ~*

and the escape character itself: use ~~ to find ~
 
D

Dave Peterson

ps.

To find ???, you'd look for ~?~?~?



Not sure if this is an Excel problem or a general Microsoft products
"feature", but here goes:-

I've inherited a HUGE spreadsheet with 6 figures of cells in total(!)
and I'm told that some have been highlighted for query or error with
"???" in the cell (in addition to other text in that cell).

Trouble is, as soon as I do "find" with the "?" character, it seems to
ignore it, as if ? is some reserved character.

Does anyone have any idea how I can get round this?

Ta!
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