Conditional formating on text contents

  • Thread starter Thread starter Brad
  • Start date Start date
B

Brad

Can Excel 2002 use conditional formatting on partial text content? For
example, if I have a list of names, can it highlight cells with the value of
"Tom" if the list contains "Tom Smith, Tom Jones, George, Brown, etc?" Can
2007 do this? I am not on the computer with 2007 today, but could move if
the function is available only in 2007.

Brad

Excel 2002 on XP Pro SP 3
Excel 2007 on Vista 64
 
Sure.

You have a few options -- with A1 the cell in question, you can use "Formula is"

=countif(a1,"*tom*")>0
or
=isnumber(search("tom",a1))
And since excel will treat an error as false, you could simplify the expression
to:
=search("tom",a1)

And if you want a case sensitive version:

=Find("tom",a1)

(=countif() is not case sensitive)
 
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