=countif(Sheet1!A$:A$,"*main*")

will give you a count of the number of cells in column A that contain the
characters "main"

--
Regards,
Tom Ogilvy



<Keith wrote in message ...
I am comparing two worksheets, and the only way I have found to
compare and find both exact and partial matches is by using the Match
function, and since it only works on one column - I need to use it on
one column at a time. The way you can find partial matches is by
appending an asterisk at the beginning and end of the string you are
looking for.

But my database (Sheet1) has 30,000 rows, and has multiple hits for a
given cell in Sheet2. For example, I want to find all customers that
live on Main Street. So in Sheet2, I entered *Main* in cell B4, and
then enter the following in Cell C4. This will search through column
A in sheet1 from Cell A1 through Cell A30000, where the addresses are
stored:

=MATCH(B4,Sheet1!A$1:A$30000,0)

But the problem is that it returns the row number of the first match -
which is 8. However, "Main Street" exists in row 8, row, 37, row 96,
etc.

I want to somehow search for all instances of the word "Main" in
column A. Is there any way to do this?