Teresa, your explaination has me a bit confused but I'm gonna take a
shot at this anyhow. I am assuming that you want to be able to use a
particular cell on your worksheet to enter some text into and then be
able to see which cells in your sheet contain an instance of the search
text. If this is true then try this approach...

Assuming that the cell you are using to enter your search criteria in
is named Criteria. And that you use a formula similar to this one below
as a conditional format in every cell you wish to search.

=LEN(A3)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A3,PROPER(Criteria),""), Criteria,""))0
If you do not know how to do:

1 Name a cell OR
2 Apply conditional formats

then just tell me what you don't understand and I'll get back to you.
If you use this method, you can have all the cells that contain your
search string change colors instantly so that it is easier for you to
sort them out. Hope this is in the ballpark...Mark