The spreadsheet is thousands of rows and each column has large text strings
that must be broken down into individual columns. The spreadsheet contains
data about retired racing greyhounds, their owners, and all of their
littermates.

I've been using the text to column function for some relatively structured
data columns and, in the more unstructured columns, the tip on
www.contextures.com for filtering a long text string to find the values of:
male
female
adopt
racing

There are columns for thirteen littermates that all have adjoining Sex and
Status fields. They need to be filtered.

The data for littermate4 looks like this:

AC AD AE AF
Littermate4 female L4Sex L4Status
Rapido Wonderful female
Palmer male

AC is the column that needs to be filtered. When tested for True all females
will display in AD as the value True. Then I can paste the word female into
column AE. Then I pick all to display and change the label from female to
male and when filtered as True the word male can be pasted into AE. Same
procedure for adopt except that gets pasted into AF. This worked using this
formula through column Z.

Things have come to a complete stop because the function no longer works. :(

The function below should return a value of true or false, but returns a
zero and an error message

=ISNUMBER(SEARCH($AC$1,AD2))

The Excel error message states:

Microsoft Excel cannot calculate a formula. Cell references in the formula
refer to the formulas result, creating a circular reference. Try one of the
following:

€¢ If you accidentally created the circular reference, click OK. This will
display the Circular Reference toolbar and help for using it to correct your
formula.
€¢ For more information about circular references and how to work with them,
click Help.
€¢ To continue, leaving the formula as it is, click Cancel.

Couldnt figure out what to do with that little circular reference toolbar
after clicking okay.

Tried the second suggestion and changed the value to 5000. Result changed
from zero to False. Tried to go to a 50,000 number and the number wasnt
acceptable. Went to option three.

The third option doesnt change anything and gets me no closer to getting
the data sorted into new columns.

Gave up and came here. :(

TIA for any and all help!!!

--
From the ashes arose the Phoenix, raising wide its arms to embrace new life!