Page 236 - Excel 2013 All-in-One For Dummies

218 Find and Replace This Disgrace!
6. Choose the By Columns option from the Search drop-down menu to have Excel search down the columns (that is, down and then to the right from the active cell).
By default, Excel locates the search string in the contents of each cell as entered on the Formula bar. This means that if you’re looking for a cell that contains 1,250 and the spreadsheet contains the formula =750+500, whose calculated value as displayed in the cell is 1,250, Excel won’t consider this cell to be a match because in searching the Formula bar, it finds =750+500 instead of 1,250.
To have Excel search the contents of each cell (and thus, consider a cell that displays your value to be a match even when its contents on the Formula bar don’t contain the search string), you need to change the Look In setting from Formulas to Values. If you want Excel to search for the search string in the comments you’ve added to cells, you need to change the Look In setting to Comments.
7. Choose Values from the Look In drop-down menu to have Excel locate the search string in the contents of each cell as it’s displayed in the worksheet. Choose Comments from this drop-down menu instead to have Excel locate the search string in the comments that you’ve added to cells.
Note that when you select Comments to search the comments you’ve added to the spreadsheet, you can’t specify any formatting to search for because the Format button in the Find and Replace dialog box becomes grayed out.
By default, Excel ignores case differences between the search string and the content of the cells being searched so that Assets, ASSETS, and assets all match the search string, Assets. To find only exact matches, follow Step 8.
8. Select the Match Case check box to find occurrences of the search string when it matches the case that you entered.
By default, Excel considers any occurrence of the search string to be a match — even when it occurs as part of another part of the cell entry. So when the search string is 25, cells containing 25, 15.25, 25 Main Street, and 250,000 are all considered matches. To find only complete occur- rences of your search string in a cell, follow Step 9.
9. Select the Match Entire Cell Contents check box to find occurrences of the search string only when it’s the entire cell entry.
After you’ve entered the search string and search options as you want them, you’re ready to start searching the spreadsheet.