Formula Friday – Use The Search Function To Create A Search Bar In An Excel Cell.


Happy Friday Excellers Welcome to another blog post in my Excel #formulafriday series. .  Today let’s look at creating a search bar right in an Excel cell in our workbook. Yes, you can use the search function in Excel to create a dynamic search bar right in an Excel cell on your worksheet.so.

So, let’s work through an example. Here is my sample data set.

search function Excel

I have a shortened list of Sales Invoices.  I want to use the Cell C3 as a search cell.  Subsequently, I want Excel to highlight all of the cells in the data set that match the value that is in Cell C3.

We do this with Conditional Formatting, and using a formula to determine which cells to format.

Conditional Formatting Process.

  • Home Tab
  • Styles Group
  • Conditional Formatting
  • Use A Formula To Determine Which Cells To Format
SEARCH FUNCTION CREATE SEARCH BAR IN CELL

The Search Function In Excel. Syntax Recap.

The formula is simple.  THE SEARCH Function has 3 arguments

  • find_text – The text to find.
  • within_text – The text to search within.
  • start_num – [optional] Starting position in the text to search. Optional, defaults to 1

So in our example, we are searching for the text  in $C$3 in range starting in E4, we can leave the optional argument start_num so it defaults to 1.  If the text in $C$3 is found in E4 then the condition is TRUE, the formatting is applied.  Simple.

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Barbara

Barbara is an experienced data analyst with over 20 years of experience. Author of the How To Excel At Excel Top 50 Excel tips Ebook, YouTuber and Excel Blogger.

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