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How to find text in a cell in excel using IF function

February 13, 2023
5.7K Views

Sometimes, you may need to know or want to find out if something is in a cell in Excel. For instance, you may want to alert the user that a username does not exist or to check if there's an amount for a purchase order. Suppose function is essential in such cases.

The IF function is one of the most important functions that could be used in Excel for testing data for a specific condition. If a condition becomes true, then it returns a value, and if this condition becomes false, then it returns nothing., Learn how to find text in a cell in Microsoft Excel using the if formula and logical operators with the help of this tutorial,

Tips that are provided in this article are compatible with versions 2010/2013/2016.

How To Find Text In A Cell In Excel Using IF function- Method 1

We can do that by combining the IF function with ISNUMBER and SEARCH function

The syntax of this function is

=IF(ISNUMBER(SEARCH(substring,text)),substring,

1.Now let’s suppose we want to apply this function in C1 cell and check whether A2 cell has some text.

=IF(ISNUMBER(SEARCH(C$1,$A2)),C$1,)

Now, as you can see from the above that A2 has no text, so in return, it has given us 0 value.

Now you know how to find text in a cell in excel using if function by combining it with other functions.

How To Find Text In A Cell In Excel Using IF function- Method 2

Sometimes you need to find a specific text in a cell. For example, if you want to know if a particular person is on the list or not. The IF function is an excellent tool for this kind of problem. In this tutorial, we will show you how to use the IF function in Excel to find text in cells.

1. Let's say that you have a list of employees in column A and you want to know if one of them is John,” using the following formula:

=IF(C2=John, No, Yes)

2. This formula will return Yes if C2 contains the word John; otherwise returns No.”

That’s how to use the IF function to find text in a cell in Excel.

How To Find Text In A Cell In Excel Using IF function- Method 3

1.Using the same previous method, sometimes you need to find the text that is case sensitive, then we combine IF combine with the EXACT function

=IF(EXACT(C2, John), No,” Yes)

2.In this case, the formula will return Yes only if the cell contains John.” If it doesn't, it will produce No.”

3.To check, we have written our required word in lower case, and the result we can see is that it has returned no.

That’s how to find text in a cell in excel using the IF function combined with the exact function.

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