For your first conditional formula...
=ISNUMBER(SEARCH("h*h",A1))

That will find false positives like:

thigh
thorough
haha
happy birthday


--
Biff
Microsoft Excel MVP


"Rick Rothstein (MVP - VB)" wrote in
message ...
What about this? For your first conditional formula...

=ISNUMBER(SEARCH("h*h",A1))

and for your second conditional formula...

=ISNUMBER(SEARCH("h*x",A1))

Note, both of these are case insensitive.

Rick


"Nastech" wrote in message
...
in Conditional Format, trying to shorten many examples of:

=OR(LEFT(CM9,1)="h",RIGHT(CM9,1)="h")

to something like:

=OR(FIND(CM9,"H"),FIND(CM9,"X"))
but cannot get multiple items to be valid in a conditional format. is
there
another way or something doing wrong? thanks.