Search and Find are two similar functions in Excel.
Their syntax is the same (find_text,within_text,[start_num])
Basically, what do you want to find, what text are you looking in, what number character to start at.
The first two inputs are required, the third is optional. If you don’t specify then it will start looking at the very start.
The main difference between SEARCH and FIND is that FIND is case sensitive and SEARCH is not.
So, FIND(“a”, “ABCD”) will return an error, because there is no ‘a’ in ‘ABCD’, whereas SEARCH(“a”, “ABCD”) will return 1 because it treats ‘a’ and ‘A’ as the same.
With SEARCH you can also use wildcard characters. A question mark matches any single character; an asterisk matches any sequence of characters.
In the example above the function is looking for a sequence of characters that has EMP, then any 2 characters and then a dash. Note the error in the third row where the specified text is not found. Also note, the last line that is returning found as the wildcards are not distinguishing between numbers and letters.
By themselves, they are really only useful for checking if the value you are looking for is there. Combined with ISNUMBER and IF you can then use it to confirm if the value you are looking for is in the ‘within Text’ and return something more useful than a number or an error. These functions also work in well with other functions, like REPLACE and MID to then change the ‘within text’.