Debra Dalgleish has a workaround for using Data|Filter|Autofilter (It suffers
from the same malady.)
http://www.contextures.com/xlautofilter02.html#String

Can you extract the ref from the range into a helper column and then use that
helper column?

Or if you have lots of refs, could you extract them all and concatenate them
into that helper column?

wrote:

All -

I was doing wildcard matches [MATCH("*"&ref&"*",range,0)]and happened to
notice that it skipped an obvious correct match. After attacking that
for too long a time, I found that MATCH() won't handle strings longer
than 255 characters. The skipped cell satisfied ISTEXT(), FIND(),
SEARCH() and menu find efforts. The problem was that the skipped string
was 283 characters long, even though the query string started at 81.

1. Is this documented somewhere? It's not in my Excel function book,
and Google groups didn't readily reveal it.

2. What's the best workaround? Is there a UDF someone can point me to?
Right now I have over a thousand MATCHes to re-evalutate that might have
skipped some cases because the string length was too long. Right now I
plan to match on truncated strings in a helper column. Less than
perfect to say the least.

Thanks for any help.

...best, Hash

--

Dave Peterson