I'm not sure I'd want the most efficient in this case. I'd want the one that
would work.

So if you're searching a cell with that has more than 255 characters for a
string that only occurs after that 255th character, you'd have to use =find() or
=search() to get accurate results.



Darby wrote:

I am trying to find a text string within a text field column in a large
spreadsheet.

I've discovered that =COUNTIF(A1,"*abc*") does not work if the starting
position of the text is 300

=SEARCH("abc",A1) and =FIND("abc",A1) both seem to work fine.

The spreadsheet is big and slow so I'd like to pick the most efficient
choice, but am also wondering what the difference between the 2 options are.

Thanks

--

Dave Peterson