How to Use the SEARCH Function in Excel (Case-Insensitive Search)

How to Use the SEARCH Function in Excel (Case-Insensitive Search)

The SEARCH() function is used to find the position of a substring within a text string, ignoring case. This makes it extremely useful for flexible text searches.

📘 Syntax:

=SEARCH(find_text, within_text, [start_num])

✅ Example:

=SEARCH("x","Excel")

This returns 1, even though "x" in "Excel" is lowercase and "X" was lowercase too — it's case-insensitive.

🎯 Use Cases:

• Searching for keywords in a text column
• Flexible matching for data validation
• Extracting text parts based on keyword positions

💡 Difference from FIND:

Unlike FIND(), SEARCH() doesn't care about uppercase or lowercase letters — perfect for general-purpose matching.

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