An alternative to the FIND function

By Neil Shorney, Director, Naturally Sales Ltd.

Today, we'll look at a very function: SEARCH. The crucial difference, is that FIND is case-sensitive whereas SEARCH isn't. The structure is the same as FIND, so it works like this:

    =SEARCH(find_text,within_text) 

    or
    
    =SEARCH("t",A1)

If A1 contains the word "Date", this will return a "3", as "t" is the third character in the word "date".

So remember: they do the same thing, but FIND is case-sensitive and SEARCH isn't.