Search within a formula

I have a row of cells that use the formula "=HYPERLINK("http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q="&E15,E15)" that places a hyperlink in a cell based on data in Column E. In some cases I've edited the parts in quotes and replaced it with another link, i.e. "=HYPERLINK("http://www.Microsoft.com",E2)". I've set up a new column to show True/False to identify which rows have Google still in the hyperlink and which I've edited.

So far all my attempts fail as long as the source column contains the HYPERLINK formula, presumably because it has an equal sign at the beginning. If I remove the equal sign from the HYPERLINK formula, my search formulas work. I'd like to be able to perform the searches without having to modify the source column.

I've used the formula "=ISNUMBER(SEARCH("*google*",H3))" to search Column H for the formulas that contain "google" but unless I remove the = sign from column H it reports false every time. The native Excel Search works (Ctrl-F), I just can't seem to get a formula to do it.

Try ,,

Do FIND/REPLACE

Find :=H, Replace: *H

Do your SEARCH

then reverse the FIND/REPLACE

I have updated my profile, I am running Office 2016/365...thanks for that.

I was unaware of the FORMULATEXT function, this is what I needed, many thanks!

Thanks for the feedback