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smartin smartin is offline
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Default Finding data and executing an action

Excel Rookie247 wrote:
Hello all,
Need help with a challenge:

I have a massive spreadsheet with numbers and data - luckily, the data is
normalized.

I'd like to do a search for text, for example, "Education". The word would
appear in a set of words, not alone in a cell. I'd then like to delete the
entire row that "education" occurs in.

I thought there might be an easier way than doing this by sight, or by doing
a search/find all.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.


Will the keyword "education" always appear in the same column?

If so, you could a formula in a new column like
=ISNUMBER(SEARCH("education",D2))

Fill down as far as needed.

Then sort on this new column to put all the TRUE results together (they
will conveniently sort to the bottom), select those rows, and delete.

In lieu of resorting your data, place a filter on new column (in Excel
2003: Data | Filter | Autofilter), pick TRUE in the new column's filter
control. Select the entire data range, press Shift + Space to extend the
selection to full rows, press Alt + ; to refine the selection to only
the visible rows, then press Ctrl + - (control minus) to delete the
rows. You might pick up a few handy tricks doing it this way (^: