Find and replace with wildcards excel formula. You can also use it to quickly correct errors.
Find and replace with wildcards excel formula By utilizing wildcards in Replace With Text in Excel, users can quickly and accurately manipulate large amounts of data with ease and precision. Benefits of using Wildcards in Excel: Utilizing wildcards can lead to time-saving and efficiency in searching for data. Learn how to use wildcard characters in Excel to save time when working with formulas. For example, Like R?308021 Jul 2, 2014 · This Tutorial Covers: Using FIND and REPLACE in Excel (4 Examples) To Change Cell References Using Excel Find and Replace To Find and Replace Formatting in Excel To Add or Remove Line Break To Remove Text Using Wildcard Characters Here's my entire playlist of Excel tutorials: http://bit. You can also use it to quickly correct errors. You can either locate the search item for reference, or you can replace it with something else. To completely Excel has 3 wildcards. See how to use wildcard characters in search criterial, find cells with formulas or specified formatting and more. Find & Replace with Wildcard characters (but controlled by VBA)? ^& doesn't work for some reason. Mar 21, 2023 · The tutorial explains the Excel REPLACE and SUBSTITUTE functions with examples of uses. Guide to Wildcard In Excel. Learn how to use Replace with Wildcard in Excel to clean data efficiently and extract names from email addresses with ease. Discover practical examples using *, ?, and ~ in filtering, VLOOKUP (), and more. These examples can help you decide which function will work best for your worksheet. Here we discuss how to use the three types of wildcards with examples and downloadable excel template. Wildcard characters are all about searching a text with a partial match. These characters can be the asterisk (*), the question mark (?), and the tilde (~). Excel supports three primary wildcards: * (Asterisk): Represents zero or more characters. One Character A single question mark (?) matches exactly one (any) character. Hope that does the trick!! Mar 21, 2023 · Learn how to use Excel Find and Replace to search for specific text or numbers in a worksheet or in all open workbooks. May 9, 2023 · There are three main types of wildcards in Excel: the asterisk wildcard (*), the question mark wildcard (?), and the tilde escape character (~). Here are some examples. Sep 18, 2025 · Use Microsoft Excel SUBSTITUTE and REPLACE functions to change the contents of a text string, by removing old characters, and adding new characters. Nov 25, 2024 · Master Excel's find and replace wildcards to efficiently search and manipulate data using asterisks, question marks, and other special characters, streamlining workflows with regex patterns and advanced filtering techniques. A wildcard is a special character that lets you perform "fuzzy" matching on text in your Excel formulas. In this post, you will learn how to use wildcard characters in Excel. See how to use the REPLACE function with text strings, numbers and dates, and how to nest several REPLACE or SUBSTITUTE functions within one formula. Examples of wildcard character pattern matching in expressions To use a wildcard character within a pattern: Open your query in Design view. You can also use wildcard characters in the Find What box, to make the find feature more flexible. ly/tech4excel Learn how to use Excel's Find and Replace feature to easily jump to specific data. We used FIND, REPLACE, SUBSTITUTE, VLOOKUP etc. If you’re an Excel user, you’ve probably heard of wildcards. Wildcards are special characters used in Excel that replace other characters in a formula. Learn how to use the wildcard characters in Excel with real example formulas and practice exercises. To navigate to the Find and Replace tool, click on the “Home” tab, “Find & Select”, and then “Replace”. Note: check "Match entire cell contents" to exclude partial matches (we want to count cells). In your simplified example, if you went to find / replace and typed in: Find What: Blabla* Replace With: Blabla That would do the trick and remove anything following Blabla. Find(FindWhat, inputUser) + 2) End Function Other possible solutions, hints Trim + Clear + Substitute (Char (160)): Chandoo - Untrimmable Spaces – Excel Formula Learn how to efficiently remove wildcard characters in Excel using Find & Replace. Replace one or more characters in the criteria with a wildcard character. Use it when you know what text you want to change, but you don’t know (or care) where it appears in a text string. Jan 15, 2016 · What version of Excel are you using? I have 2016, I just followed the steps in the "Wildcards for items you want to replace" section, using your example above, and was able to find "texts are *" and replace all instances with "texts are replaced" and it worked as expected, unless I'm misunderstanding Nov 25, 2025 · Learn how to master partial matches in Excel, from traditional wildcard characters to using AI tools for faster, more intuitive data lookups and analysis. Aug 17, 2023 · This tutorial explains how to use the Find and Replace feature in Excel with wildcard characters, including several examples. Unleash Excel's potential with wildcards! Explore advanced formulas, solve common issues, and boost productivity by using wildcard in excel. These can also be used in the Conditional Formatting rules that use the "Only format cells that contain specific text" criteria. And a tilde (~). Sep 19, 2023 · So, whether you're a beginner or an advanced Excel user, this guide is sure to offer some valuable insights and tips to help you become more proficient in using wildcards in Excel's Find and Replace function. Learn more about applying criteria to a query. Using VBA Find and Replace. Jan 11, 2022 · But as @Anonymous suggested the wildcard filter are not available directly in power query, maybe we can use it with dax if you can share your pbix or data in excel for me to try. The short video below shows you the steps. For example, this formula: Jan 6, 2022 · Instead of having to replace each of the misspellings of “Truck” individually, we can replace all of them with wildcard symbols. Apr 6, 2023 · How to Find and Replace with Wildcard in Google Sheets What are Wildcards? Wildcards are special characters or symbols used to fine-tune your searches in Google Sheets. For example, fy06~? finds "fy06?" Use wildcard characters as comparison criteria for text filters, and when you're searching and replacing content. Hence, if you look for *1, it will look for a pattern which terminates with 1. This article teaches you how to use Find and Replace in Excel like a pro. In this guide, we're going to show you how to use Wildcard criteria in Excel formulas. You can use wildcard characters, such as an asterisk () or a question mark (?), in your search criteria: Use the asterisk to find any string of characters. Press CTRL + F to launch the Find and Replace dialog box. In Google Sheets, we have three different wildcard characters: May 13, 2019 · How to use the Find and Replace functionality in Microsoft Word. Save time and avoid losing data with this helpful tutorial. * means 0 or more characters and ? means one single character. Use the Find and Replace features in Excel to search for something in your workbook, such as a particular number or text string. Unlock new efficiency and precision in your spreadsheet tasks today. 2 days ago · Learn how to use regex match in Excel XLOOKUP and XMATCH to search patterns, validate formats, and work with structured data, complete with formula examples and practical tips. You can include wildcard characters such as question marks, tildes, and asterisks, or numbers in your search terms. Mar 14, 2023 · The tutorial shows how to make Excel IF statement with wildcard text and get it to work for partial matches. This feature enables you to find values that share a simple pattern. You will learn what wildcards are, how to use them effectively in various Excel functions, best practices, and troubleshooting tips to enhance your productivity. Mar 14, 2023 · Everything you need to know about wildcards: what wildcard characters Excel recognizes, and how to best use them with built-in features and in formulas with text and numbers. Understanding how to use them can greatly improve efficiency and productivity. Within a function, these symbols represent characters or strings. You can use them to find and replace text, match patterns, and more. Also see the FIND function page - formulas to find text (case-sensitive) May 12, 2015 · It does in the find part pof the function; and heres the help text:In the Find what box, type the text or numbers that you want to search for, or click the arrow in the Find what box, and then click a recent search in the list. (Question Mark): Represents exactly one character. There are three Excel wildcard characters (asterisk, question mark, and tilde) that can get some amazing stuff done in Excel. Discover how to use wildcards in Excel to find and analyze data with partial information. Wildcards are special characters that allow you to perform “fuzzy” matching on text in your formulas. You can search by rows and columns, search within Mar 22, 2022 · The reason this worked is that Excel searched for “<” and “>” and the wildcard indicated that any character could be in between those two brackets. The asterisk symbol denotes the occurrence of zero or more characters, while the question mark symbol signifies the presence of only a single character. Jan 13, 2017 · Function getStringToFirstOccurence(inputUser As String, FindWhat As String) As String getStringToFirstOccurence = Mid(inputUser, 1, WorksheetFunction. Learn how in this quick guide This article describes the formula syntax and usage of the SUBSTITUTE function in Microsoft Excel. Here's my entire playlist of Excel tutorials: http://bit. In the Criteria row of the field that you want to use, type the operator Like in front of your criteria. Intro Unlock the power of Excels wildcard find and replace feature with our expert guide. May 12, 2025 · Using Wildcards in Searches One of the most common uses of wildcards in Microsoft Excel is to find characters in a workbook and, if needed, replace them with alternatives. Jul 6, 2024 · In this article, you will learn about how to Find and Replace data in Excel using the Find and Replace tool, functions, shortcuts etc. Jun 2, 2025 · The SUBSTITUTE function is a way to perform a find‑and‑replace with a formula. For example Oct 5, 2023 · This tutorial explains how to find and replace values within formulas in Excel, including an example. You can also use wildcard characters to extract the first word in Excel. Discover 7 ways to master this game-changing technique, including using asterisks, question marks, and tilde characters. Boost your productivity and accuracy with these advanced Excel tips, perfect for data analysis, data cleaning, and formula optimization. May 26, 2024 · Unlock the power of Excel formulas with wildcards for dynamic, flexible data searches. Jan 6, 2020 · Wildcard represents one or more other characters. functions for this. An asterisk (*) matches zero or more characters. Use wildcard characters as comparison criteria for text filters and when you're searching and replacing content. Users can also use wildcards in conjunction with filters to get more specific search results. For more about using wildcard characters with the Find and Replace features in Excel, see Find or replace text and numbers on a worksheet. Nov 18, 2025 · Wildcards are special characters that represent one or more characters in a search string. Oct 9, 2014 · 1 Excel's Find & Replace does allow for wildcard characters. Use SUBSTITUTE when you want to replace specific text in a text string; use REPLACE when you want to replace any text that occurs in a specific location in a text string. The tilde character, on the other hand, is used to denote a wildcard Jan 4, 2021 · In Excel Find and Replace, * and ? are wildcard characters. Master this technique today to enhance your spreadsheets! This comprehensive guide aims to demystify wildcards in Excel for beginners, intermediate users, and advanced users alike. Using the same original list, if you wanted to get only the domain Aug 30, 2024 · Hop on here to learn to use wildcard characters in the find and replace feature of Excel. Home > Data > Find > Find and Replace Excel Find and Replace Examples show how to use the Find and Replace commands to find text in a worksheet or workbook, or replace text with other text, or no text. The wildcard find can also be used for more. Jan 2, 2025 · Learn how to use wildcard in Excel for efficient find and replace operations, simplifying data management with asterisk, question mark, and tilde symbols, and master Excel formulas and functions for advanced spreadsheet editing and data analysis techniques. Jun 8, 2023 · This tutorial demonstrates how to find and replace text and values using wildcards in Excel and Google Sheets. Description Substitutes new_text for old_text in a text string. The “Find” part of this process found the brackets and email addresses inside the brackets and replaced them with nothing. May 18, 2023 · With the Find and Replace feature in Excel, you can look for specific characters, and replace them with different characters, or replace them with nothing. By default, SUBSTITUTE will replace all instances of a text string with another text string. A question mark (?) matches exactly one character. Optionally, you can specify which instance of text to replace by providing a number. Examples of using wildcards with expressions. Whether you need to find and change Excel entries across multiple sheets, correct formatting issues, or even replace * in Excel (yes, wildcards work!), we’ll cover practical steps to save you time and frustration. Hence, for example, *1 would catch following (0 or more characters need to be prefixed to 1) ab1 231 1 1/80*100 fg^24123 (There is a 1 after 24 here) To suppress the wildcard behavior of * and Using Wildcards in Searches One of the most common uses of wildcards in Microsoft Excel is to find characters in a workbook and, if needed, replace them with alternatives. Jun 2, 2023 · This tutorial explains how to use the SUBSTITUTE function in Excel with wildcard characters, including examples. In this section, we’ll cover the available wildcards, for example, wildcard usage and functions that support wildcards. Aug 3, 2024 · The article focuses on how to use find and replace formula in excel. May 30, 2025 · Learn how Excel's wildcard characters enhance flexibility in search, replace, and formula logic. Alternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut CTRL + H. The post Excel Find and Replace Using Wildcards: Guide + Examples appeared first on Master Data Skills + AI. There are three wildcards in Excel: the asterisk, question mark, and tilde. Jan 29, 2025 · That’s where Excel’s Find and Replace tool shines. Mar 26, 2019 · Become an Excel wildcard wizard with our comprehensive guide! Learn how to master wildcard characters in Excel for efficient data analysis. Nov 2, 2024 · Learn how to use wildcards in Excel’s find and replace function to quickly find and update data. Syntax SUBSTITUTE (text, old_text, new_text, [instance_num May 9, 2023 · How to Search for Wildcards in Excel: Searching for wildcards in Excel is easy by using the Find and Replace tool. Jul 15, 2024 · Wildcard characters such as the asterisk “ * “, question mark “? ” and tilde “ ~ ” can greatly extend searching, counting, and additional functionality of functions such as AVERAGEIF, SUMIF, COUNTIF, Excel database functions, and others. They are used to perform pattern matching rather than exact matches.