problem with using asterisk as wildcard in conditional formatting

Hey all,

I'm currently working on a sheet where I'm using conditional formatting to shade an entire row where the color of the shading is determined by text in one of the columns (e.g. if the row has "cash" in the E column the row goes yellow, whereas if the row has "check" in the E column the row goes green). My problem arises when I attempt to use the * to account for other characters. Since sometimes I have text in the E column like "cash (just received)" I want to include that in the conditional shading. I've used the asterisk as a wildcard before for SUMIF functions and it has worked great, but for some reason when I change the conditional formatting formula to try to catch all the cells with the string "cash" anywhere in the cell (so I enter "*cash*" for what it is looking for) it isn't working and shades none of the rows, even the ones that have only "cash" in the E column and no extra characters. I know I could use the ISNUMBER and SEARCH functions but I'm stubborn and very stumped as to why the asterisk worked for my SUMIF's in (what I think is) the exact same way I am attempting to use it here.

Thanks in advance for any help. I'm using Excel 2011 for mac.

Thanks for the response dilipandey, but if you look at the end of my post I do know that the ISNUMBER and SEARCH functions provide a way to do this, I was just curious as to why the asterisk was seemingly working well when using the SUMIF yet wasn't when attempting to use it in the same way with the conditional formatting formula. That is what is really getting me.

Thanks again, though.

Ahhhh great, thanks very much daddylonglegs. That's what I was looking for.