Wildcard in Excel is selecting full string instead of partial text.

Hi Everyone,

I'm having issues with using a wildcard in Excel.

In a column I want to find values called "FFI".
Within this column there is also a number of values called "Office".
I've used two asterisks in my formula to surround "FFI", but it still includes the "Office" values, which contains the same combination of words.

The issue is that the word "Office" contains the words "FFI" within it. The formula is including the cells containing 'Office' when it should only contain "FFI".

The formula works in other cells in which it has to find partial text.

My formula is below:

=SUM(COUNTIFS(Pivot_Range[State],{"Active","Proposed"},Pivot_Range[Severity],"*4*",Pivot_Range[Tags],"*"& FFI &"*"))

I always assumed this was the method to identify a partial text value, so any insight would be very helpful.

FFI is a value within the same column, which is called 'Tags'. I slightly changed the formula in order to make it more understandable.

This is the original:

=SUM(COUNTIFS(Pivot_Range[State],{"Active","Proposed"},Pivot_Range[Severity],"*4*",Pivot_Range[Tags],"*"& C13 &"*"))

options are:
is there a space before or after FFI if so match with the space as well "* FFI*" or "FFI *"
add and extra condition <>"*Office*" unless office can appear in the same cell as FFI

I can't attatch any files unfortunately, I'm not allowed to at work . I'll paste a Markdown table below.

This is the table I intend to put my results in:

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This is the Pivot Table I'm using as my source:

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There are also no spaces surrounding "FFI"

xinitwits solution works perfectly, Thanks everyone for your help, it's greatly appreciated. I never thought it would have been this much trouble!