On Tue, 2 Jan 2007 12:54:00 -0800, rapid1
wrote:

Hi Ron - that seems to net me the same thing - it appears to be looking at
the cell and not the text within the cell? I have been testing with data I
know is in both sheets and I cannot return any good info.

(A1) contains ADVAN & (B434) contains ADVANTAGE, what do I put in (C1) to
let me know that (B434) exists?

Ray



=SEARCH(A1,B434)

will return a 1.

Or you could do something like:

=IF(ISNUMBER(SEARCH(A1,B434)),TRUE)

which will return TRUE.

If the contents of A1 are not found in B434, then the first formula will return
#VALUE!, the second would return FALSE.


However, if A1 is empty, or contains, for example, VAN, or TAG, or AD, or AGE,
then the formula will also return a 1.

You could easily test for A1 being empty.

How to find the "best match" is more difficult.
--ron