Looking for a way to search for specific text across columns
 

I need to figure out a way to search a range of cells for "comments=". The
problem is that there are people's comments after the equals sign so the cell
may contain the text string with other text.

I then need to be able to remove the text string "comments=" and put the
remaining results into a different cell.

This one has really thrown me for a loop. The comments could be in any
column A through K. I can't even figure out how to find cells that CONTAIN
"comments=", everything I have tried has required an exact match of the
entire cell . If anyone could help I would really appreciate it.

Looking for a way to search for specific text across columns
 

If you want to look for text being contained within some other text in
a cell (A1), you can use SEARCH or FIND (case-sensitive), something
like this:

=IF(ISNUMBER(SEARCH("comments=",A1)),"yes","no")

Hope this gets you on your way.

Pete

dathomas wrote:
I need to figure out a way to search a range of cells for "comments=". The
problem is that there are people's comments after the equals sign so the cell
may contain the text string with other text.

I then need to be able to remove the text string "comments=" and put the
remaining results into a different cell.

This one has really thrown me for a loop. The comments could be in any
column A through K. I can't even figure out how to find cells that CONTAIN
"comments=", everything I have tried has required an exact match of the
entire cell . If anyone could help I would really appreciate it.

Looking for a way to search for specific text across columns
 

I can't even figure out how to find cells that CONTAIN
"comments=", everything I have tried has required an exact match of the
entire cell .

Have you checked out the SEARCH( )? FIND( ) for case sensitive.

To capture the characters after "comments=" you can try the MID( ).

I have created a formula that has IF( ), SEARCH( ) and MID( ) and it seems to do the job.

If you like, you can also try DATAAUTO FILTERCUSTOM AUTO FILTERthen choose "contains" or "begins with" to pull out a subset.

Epinn

"dathomas" <u27558@uwe wrote in message news:67528dfdd7e34@uwe...
I need to figure out a way to search a range of cells for "comments=". The
problem is that there are people's comments after the equals sign so the cell
may contain the text string with other text.

I then need to be able to remove the text string "comments=" and put the
remaining results into a different cell.

This one has really thrown me for a loop. The comments could be in any
column A through K. I can't even figure out how to find cells that CONTAIN
"comments=", everything I have tried has required an exact match of the
entire cell . If anyone could help I would really appreciate it.