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Posted to microsoft.public.excel.worksheet.functions
SteveDB1 SteveDB1 is offline
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Default Wildcard character in an "If" statement?

I want to do what seems to be a similar IF function.
Here is my version.
=IF(a1="*stringname*",b1*1/2,b1*3/4)
My goal is to look in a cell which contains a phrase. The phrase itself
varies {the cell contents could be a name of a person, with (word) following
it}, but the particular component that I'm seeking either shows up as (word),
or as (word1). Eg., cell contents being within the dbl quote marks: "Dave
Johnson (word)", or "Danny Thomas (word1)"
Where "word" could be anything.
I've tried already, and it <always returns a false value-- b1*3/4.
1- can I do this?
2- what would I need to do in order to make it work?
I've also tried the tilda, and question mark. Neither of those are working.
If however, I just have it look in a cell with a single character, the
equation works fine [=if(a1="c",b1*1/2,b1*3/4)]. I'd assume that it'd work
well too if I had just a single word in the cell, as opposed to a number of
them. For some reason I just can't get it to work with longer elements, where
I want to locate a single word within a string of 5 or six words.
If I'm unable to do this, what variation would I need to accomplish this?
Thank you.