Excel custom autofilter- how to find wildcard characters but not as wildcards (e.g. "?") in a cell
 

Ok, I'm embarrased by how dumb this question is... my customer has a
spreadsheet where they use "?" in a column, and I need to be able to quickly
filter (not sort) their worksheet to pull just the rows that have a "?" in
one of two target columns. I figured I could just do two auotfilters and
work from the results (e.g. that may leave me with some duplicates when I
combine the two results)- but the problem is that the custom autofilter
considers ? to be a single wildcard character. I also tried "?" (in quotes)
but that doesn't return any results at all, because the ? in each cell isn't
surrounded by quotes (same for '?').

Is it possible to use custom autofilter (contains = something) to determine
if a cell contains a questionmark?

Thanks!
Keith

Excel custom autofilter- how to find wildcard characters but not a
 

Keith -
Use a tilde ~ before the ? and it should work fine
Kristin

"Keith" wrote:

Ok, I'm embarrased by how dumb this question is... my customer has a
spreadsheet where they use "?" in a column, and I need to be able to quickly
filter (not sort) their worksheet to pull just the rows that have a "?" in
one of two target columns. I figured I could just do two auotfilters and
work from the results (e.g. that may leave me with some duplicates when I
combine the two results)- but the problem is that the custom autofilter
considers ? to be a single wildcard character. I also tried "?" (in quotes)
but that doesn't return any results at all, because the ? in each cell isn't
surrounded by quotes (same for '?').

Is it possible to use custom autofilter (contains = something) to determine
if a cell contains a questionmark?

Thanks!
Keith

Excel custom autofilter- how to find wildcard characters but not as wildcards (e.g. "?") in a cell
 

Keith

Since ? is a wildcard character to start with you have to trick Excel into
finding it.

Precede with a tilde ~?

Same for finding asterisks ~*


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 16:31:31 -0500, "Keith"
wrote:

Ok, I'm embarrased by how dumb this question is... my customer has a
spreadsheet where they use "?" in a column, and I need to be able to quickly
filter (not sort) their worksheet to pull just the rows that have a "?" in
one of two target columns. I figured I could just do two auotfilters and
work from the results (e.g. that may leave me with some duplicates when I
combine the two results)- but the problem is that the custom autofilter
considers ? to be a single wildcard character. I also tried "?" (in quotes)
but that doesn't return any results at all, because the ? in each cell isn't
surrounded by quotes (same for '?').

Is it possible to use custom autofilter (contains = something) to determine
if a cell contains a questionmark?

Thanks!
Keith

Excel custom autofilter- how to find wildcard characters but not as wildcards (e.g. "?") in a cell
 

Thanks Kristin & Gord!
I learned something new today :)
Keith

"Gord Dibben" <gorddibbATshawDOTca wrote in message
...
Keith

Since ? is a wildcard character to start with you have to trick Excel into
finding it.

Precede with a tilde ~?

Same for finding asterisks ~*


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Thu, 21 Dec 2006 16:31:31 -0500, "Keith"
wrote:

Ok, I'm embarrased by how dumb this question is... my customer has a
spreadsheet where they use "?" in a column, and I need to be able to
quickly
filter (not sort) their worksheet to pull just the rows that have a "?" in
one of two target columns. I figured I could just do two auotfilters and
work from the results (e.g. that may leave me with some duplicates when I
combine the two results)- but the problem is that the custom autofilter
considers ? to be a single wildcard character. I also tried "?" (in
quotes)
but that doesn't return any results at all, because the ? in each cell
isn't
surrounded by quotes (same for '?').

Is it possible to use custom autofilter (contains = something) to
determine
if a cell contains a questionmark?

Thanks!
Keith