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Lesson 59 of 104 2 min Updated Completed

Advanced Find: Match Case and Wildcards

The Find and Replace dialog box has more options than it first shows. Here’s how to search the whole workbook, match case, and use wildcards.

  1. On the Home tab, click Find & Select > Find (Ctrl + F).

  2. Click Options.

    The Options button in the Find and Replace dialog box

  3. In Find what, type the text, for example Marketing. To search every sheet, choose Workbook from the Within list.

  4. Tick Match case to find only text with the same capital letters (Marketing, but not marketing).

  5. Tick Match entire cell contents to find cells that contain exactly Marketing and nothing else, so not Dept of Marketing or Marketing and Sales.

  6. Click Find Next for the next match, or Find All to list them all.

    Find options with Workbook, Match case and Match entire cell contents

Wildcards

Use these when you’re not sure of the exact spelling:

  • A question mark (?) stands for one character. M?rketing finds Marketing, Merketing and Morketing.
  • An asterisk (*) stands for any number of characters, including none. M*rketing finds Marketing, Maaarketing and Mrketing.

Tip: To find an actual question mark or asterisk, put a tilde before it: ~? or ~*.