Skip to content
Free Excel Tutorials
  • Home
  • Excel For Beginners
  • Excel Intermediate
  • Advanced Excel For Experts

Data Analysis

  • Conditional Formatting Color Scales Examples in Excel
  • How To Compare Two Lists in Excel
  • Excel Bar Chart
  • How to Create Gantt Chart in Excel
  • What-If Analysis: Scenarios and Goal Seek in Excel

References

  • How to get relative column numbers in a range in Excel
  • How to get last row in numeric data in Excel
  • Basic INDEX MATCH approximate in Excel
  • Complete List of Excel Lookup and Reference Functions, References and Examples
  • How to reference named range different sheet in Excel

Data Validations

  • Excel Data validation unique values only
  • Excel Data validation specific characters only
  • Excel Data validation require unique number
  • Excel Data validation must begin with
  • Excel Data validation allow weekday only

How to check if cell contains one of many things in Excel

by

This tutorial shows how to check if cell contains one of many things in Excel using example below:

If you want to test a cell to see if it contains one of several things, you can do so with a formula that uses the SEARCH function, with help from the ISNUMBER and SUMPRODUCT functions.

Formula

=SUMPRODUCT(--ISNUMBER(SEARCH(things,A1)))>0

Explanation

Context

Let’s say you have a list of text strings in the range B5:B11, and you want to test each cell against another list of things in the named range “things” E5:E9. In other words, for each cell in B5:B11, you want to know: does this cell contain any of the things in E5:E9?

You could start build a big formula based on nested IF statements, but that won’t be any fun at all, especially if the list of things you want to check for is large.

Solution

The solution is to to create a formula that can test for multiple values and return a list of TRUE / FALSE values. Once we have that, we can process that list (an array, actually) with SUMPRODUCT.

The formula we’re using looks like this:

=SUMPRODUCT(--ISNUMBER(SEARCH(things,B5)))>0

How this formula works

The key is this snippet:

ISNUMBER(SEARCH(things,B5))

This is based on another formula (explained in detail here) that simply checks a cell for a single substring. If the cell contains the substring, the formula returns TRUE. If not, the formula returns FALSE.

However, if we give the same formula a list of things (in this case, we are using a named range called “things”, E5:E11) it will give us back a list of TRUE / FALSE values. The result is actually an array that looks like this:

{TRUE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE;FALSE}

Notice that if we have even one TRUE in the array, we know a cell contains at least one thing in the list. So, we can force the TRUE / FALSE values to 1s and 0s with a double negative (–, also called a double unary):

--ISNUMBER(SEARCH(things,B5))

which yields an array like this:

{1;0;0;0;0}

Now we process the result with SUMPRODUCT, which will add up the entire array. We know if we get a non-zero result, we have a “hit”, so we use >0 to force a final result of either TRUE or FALSE.

=SUMPRODUCT(--ISNUMBER(SEARCH(things,B5)))>0

With a hard-coded list

There’s no requirement that you use a range for your list of things. If you’re only looking for a small number of things, you can use a list in array format, which is called an array constant. For example, if you’re just looking for the colors red, blue, and green, you can use {“red”,”blue”,”green”} like this:

=SUMPRODUCT(--ISNUMBER(SEARCH({"red","blue","green"},B5)))>0

Preventing false matches

One problem with this approach is you may get false matches from substrings that appear inside longer words. For example, if you try to match “dr” you may also find “Andrea”, “drink”, “dry”, etc. since “dr” appears inside these words. This happens because SEARCH automatically does a “contains” match.

For a quick hack, you can add space around the search words (i.e. ” dr “, or “dr “) to avoid catching “dr” in another word. But this will fail if “dr” appears first or last in a cell, or appears with punctuation.

If you need a more accurate solution, one option is to normalize the text first in a helper column, taking care to also add a leading and trailing space. Then you use the formula on this page on the resulting text.

Post navigation

Previous Post:

DECIMAL function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation

Next Post:

AVERAGE function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Learn Basic Excel

Ribbon
Workbook
Worksheets
Format Cells
Find & Select
Sort & Filter
Templates
Print
Share
Protect
Keyboard Shortcuts

Categories

  • Charts
  • Data Analysis
  • Data Validation
  • Excel Functions
    • Cube Functions
    • Database Functions
    • Date and Time Functions
    • Engineering Functions
    • Financial Functions
    • Information Functions
    • Logical Functions
    • Lookup and Reference Functions
    • Math and Trig Functions
    • Statistical Functions
    • Text Functions
    • Web Functions
  • Excel VBA
  • Excel Video Tutorials
  • Formatting
  • Grouping
  • Others

Logical Functions

  • Not Equal To ‘<>‘ operator in Excel
  • IF function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • How to use IFS function in Excel
  • How to use Excel XOR Function
  • Invoice status with nested if in Excel

Date Time

  • How to get Holiday Date from Year in Excel
  • NETWORKDAYS function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • How to calculate next anniversary date or birthday in Excel
  • Add days exclude certain days of week in Excel
  • Assign points based on late time in Excel

Grouping

  • Group times into unequal buckets in Excel
  • How to randomly assign data to groups in Excel
  • Group arbitrary text values in Excel
  • If cell contains one of many things in Excel
  • Group numbers at uneven intervals in Excel

General

  • How to fill cell ranges with random number from fixed set of options in Excel
  • How to calculate decrease by percentage in Excel
  • Find Most Frequently Occurring Word in Excel Worksheet
  • How to fill cell ranges with random text values in Excel
  • Creating and Opening an existing file in Excel
© 2025 xlsoffice . All Right Reserved. | Teal Smiles | Abbreviations And Their Meaning