Is there any way to use the "=RIGHT" or "=LEFT" functions to search the text
that makes up a formula, rather than the result of the formula?

I have a list of formulae that reference a sequence of cells, and I need to
check that the sequence isn't broken (I'm going to ask it to check that each
cell reference is one away from the previous reference, and return an error
message if it isn't).

Thanks!