Find and Replace Functions in Excel

This article provides a clear overview of Find and Replace Functions in Excel, with the main facts, useful context, and practical details organized for easy reading.

1. Find () Function

- Meaning: Used to determine the starting position of the substring in the string containing the search string. The return value is a number.

- Syntax: FIND (find_text, within_text [, start_num]) .

Arguments

+ find_text: string to search.

+ within_text: string containing the string to search.

+ start_num: search location.

- Example 1:

- Example 2: Search for the letter "M" in the string with 2 letters m return value is 13. Thus Find function is case sensitive.

- Example 3: Where a string has many characters to find, the Find () function returns the first found character. In the example below there are 2 letters T but the return value is 1.

- Example 4: Where the function value is not found returns the value #VALUE .

2. Replace () Function

- Meaning: Used to replace 1 character or 1 substring in the original string with 1 other character or other substring.

- Syntax: REPLACE (old_text, start_num, num_chars, new_text) .

Arguments

+ old_text: Text string containing substring to be replaced.

+ start_num: Start position instead.

+ num_chars: Number of characters to be replaced.

+ new_text: The replacement character string from the start position to the end of the number of characters to be replaced.

- For example: