Find and Select in Excel

What is Find and Select Tool In Excel?

Find and Select in Excel is a very useful tool to find data as required. Along with FIND, the Replace function in excel is also quite handy which helps to find specific text and replace it with other text(s).

How to use Find and Select in Excel?

Under the Home tab, there is the Find & Select excel section

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• Suppose we want to find a ‘credit card’ from the data given.  We need to go to the Find section and type credit card.

• When we press Find Next we get the next result where there is a credit card.

• The find also works with fuzzy logic. Suppose we give “cre” in the find section, it will find the relevant words that contain ‘cre’.

• In order to find the given text in all places of the worksheet, click Find All. It will highlight the keyword present everywhere in the worksheet.

• We can do match case also within the worksheet to find search for case sensitive data. For this, click on Options then select the Match case option.

• For finding cells that contain just the characters that are typed in the Find What box, then we have to select the Match entire cell contents checkbox.

• Find can be also done through an excel keyboard shortcut. We need to press CTRL + F then the Find & Replace tab will open up.

• Now, if we want to replace something we can use the Replace tab. Let’s say we want to replace credit with online payment. Then we click Replace All.

• It will replace all the cells containing credit with online payment.

• Then go to Excel’s Go to Special Feature.

• This can be used to quickly select all that contains formulas, conditional formatting, constant, data validation etc.

Things to remember

• Excel saves formatting that is defined. If one searches the worksheet for data again and cannot find the characters, then one needs to clear the formatting options from the previous search
• In the above case, first we need to go Find and Replace dialog box, then click Find tab and then click Options to display options for formatting. Then we have to click the arrow next to Format and then click Clear Find Format
• There is no option to replace the value in a cell comment.

Recommended Articles

This has been a guide to Find and Select in Excel. Here we discuss how to use Excel Find and Select Tool along with an example and downloadable template. You may also look at these useful functions in excel –

• Apply Conditional Formatting for Dates
• How to Find Duplicates in Excel?
• Find and Replace in Excel
• Fill Down in Excel