Cell Formula for AZ5:

=IF(Q5="","N",IF(SEARCH("FD",Q5,21),"Y",IF(SEARCH ("FS",Q5,21),"Y","N")))

evaluates to

#VALUE!

for non-blank Q5 cell values that do not contain "FD", or that contain "FS".
This is apparently by Microsoft design, but I still need to determine
whether cells in column Q contain certain character sets in characters 2-13
(excluding the first character), and to record a Y (Yes) in column AZ in that
event. The following are the results at present. It appears that the above
formula will not work if the "FD" is not contained in the cell, causing the
error message before the "IF FALSE" instruction evaluates. I guess what I'm
looking for is a string-based "contains" function, but I can't seem to find
one in Excel XP. My next thought is to construct a column for each
character set to be tested, then a formula to select any "Y" result, but I
doubt that will work with error messages in the cells.

Any thoughts re keeping this simple would be appreciated.

Cell Q5 Cell AZ5
(BLANK) N
PFSTEST #VALUE!
PFSFDTEST Y
PFDTEST Y
PFDFSTEST Y
PFSTEST #VALUE!
N
N

Mike B