Excel 2000 in a Nutshell

Name

FIND

Synopsis

Use FIND to determine the location of one text string within another string. The function returns a number that indicates the first character location of the specified string. For example, if you used FIND to determine the location of “the” within the word “mother” the function would return the value 3 because the t is in the third place in the word.

To Calculate

=FIND(Find_Text, Within_Text, Start_Num)

The Find_Text and Within_Text arguments are required for this function. The Start_Num argument is optional.

Find_Text

Indicates the text that you want to find. If this argument references empty text (” “) the function returns the first character specified by the Start_Num argument.

Within_Text

Indicates the text that you want to search.

Start_Num

Specifies the first character in the string specified by Within_Text where you want to start looking. If this is omitted the function uses a start value of 1.

Example

Figure 18-4 illustrates how to use FIND to determine the character location of the string “Excel” in the string “Microsoft Excel”. Since I wanted to start searching from the beginning of the string, I did not use the Start_Num argument.