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Friday, November 19, 2010

Excel Tip ~ to search for asterisk '*' in Excel



Microsoft Excel uses the tilde (~) as a marker to indicate that the next character is a literal. By appending a "~" to the front of "?" or "*", Find and Replace function will treat ? and * as character, instead of wildcard, allowing the special characters to be found specifically inside the cell.


 

How to Find or Replace... 

... Question Mark (?), 

... Asterisk (*) or 

... Tilde (~) 

in Microsoft Office Excel


In Microsoft Office Excel spreadsheet program, question mark (?) and asterisk (*) have been used as wildcards, which allow user to search for (via Find or Replace) a matching pattern or sequence. Thus, when trying to search or find question mark and/or asterisk only, Excel will find and go into each and every cell that has any value, or return all cells when finding all is pressed.


In order to search for a question mark (?) or asterisk (*) inside the value, formula or comments on the cells of worksheets or workbook, precede the ? or * with a tilde (~). For example,


~?

~*


Microsoft Excel uses the tilde (~) as a marker to indicate that the next character is a literal. By appending a "~" to the front of "?" or "*", Find and Replace function will treat ? and * as character, instead of wildcard, allowing the special characters to be found specifically inside the cell.


As title (~) is also a special character which serves as literal indicator, thus in order to find or replace title (~) in the sheet, use double title instead, as shown in example below:


~~



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