You could check for B9 being two characters first:

=IF(LEN(B9)<2,"too few chars",ISNUMBER(SEARCH(LEFT(B9,2),$B$2)))

Hope this helps.

Pete

On Oct 29, 11:51 pm, nastech
wrote:
(071029) FIND TEXT IN 1 CELL, COMPARE TO ANOTHER CELL

Hi, trying to compare text, e.g.:

$B$2: A0 B0 C0 D0 E0 F0
B9: F00

trying to see if the left 2 characters in B9 exist in B2, but when use just
"F" in B9, get a false positive/TRUE result, using:

=ISNUMBER(SEARCH(LEFT(B9,2),$B$2))

thanks.