Find, FindB Functions in Excel: Syntax, Examples, and Tips

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

To better understand the FIND function, FINDB you follow the article below:

Description

FIND, FINDB are functions that find a text string in another text, the return value is the first position of the first character in the search string.

- FIND function: for languages that use single-byte encoding (SBCS), always count every single-byte or double-byte character regardless of the default language, of Windows & Office.

- FINDB: for languages that use double-byte encoding (DBCS), FINDB counts each double-byte character as 2 when you set the default language to DBCS. Otherwise, FINDB will count each character as 1.

The languages that support DBCS include: Japanese - Japanese, Chinese (Simplified) - Simplified Chinese, Chinese (Traditional) - Traditional Chinese and Korean - Korean.

Syntax

= FIND (find_text, within_text, [start_num])

= FINDB (find_text, within_text, [start_num])

Arguments

- find_text: text string to find, is the required parameter.

- within_text: text containing the text to be searched, is the required parameter.

- start_num: the starting position of the search within within text, the first character of within_text is the position 1 position that gradually increases with the characters of within_text. If you omit start_num, it defaults to 1, which is an optional parameter.

Note

- FIND and FINDB functions are case sensitive and do not allow the use of wildcards. If you need to distinguish uppercase and lowercase letters and use wildcards, you should use SEARCH or SEARCHB.

- If the text string you are looking for is blank text "", FIND will return the position of the first character within within_text (the position of start_num or 1 if start_num is omitted).

- If the text string to find (find_text) does not appear in the find text (within_text) of the FIND function, FINDB will return the error value.

- If start_num is less than 0 or greater than the length of within_text, FIND, FINDB returns the error value.

- Use start_num to skip a specified number of characters without searching. The FIND function always returns the number of characters counting from the beginning of within_text, counting all the characters you ignore when using start_num greater than 1.

To better understand you to follow some of the examples below:

For Example

Give the text string (within_text) as follows:

1. Find the position of the first u in the text string of cell B6.

Applying FIND: = FIND ("u", B6) returns 3.

2. Find the position of the first letter h in the text string of cell B6 starting with the 8th character.

Applying FIND function: = FIND ("h", B6,8) The result is 10 because the function counts the characters you ignore when using start_num is 8.