Conditional formatting - cells that contain *

[kufta4]

I'm hoping I didn't use a character that isn't possible to do this.

Column A I have Texas*

Columns B, C and D contain numbers. I wan't to fill in these columns a color if Column A contains a * but I can't get it to work.

Thanks

[benishiryo]

hi kufta4, select the range you want to apply to (say from A2:A10)
in Excel 2007 & above, go to Home -> Conditional Formatting -> New Rule -> Use a formula to determine which cells to format -> Format values where this formula is true:
=COUNTIF($A2,"*~**")

format the color desired. Then press OK.

to explain, "*" is a wildcard. if you use this below, you are looking for ANY kind of text.
=COUNTIF($A2,"*")

"~" is a character to tell excel that the next character is a literal character you wish to find. that makes "*" on the right of it no longer a wildcard. but note that this is like finding if A2 IS EQUALS to "*".
=COUNTIF($A2,"~*")

to find whether A2 CONTAINS "*", add in 2 wildcards in front and behind.
=COUNTIF($A2,"*~**")

[XL&ME]

Try this: highlight the cells you want to conditional format, go to conditional formatting, highlight cell rules, text that contains ~*, then choose your highlight color. That little symbol is the tilde on the key next to the number 1.

[kufta4]

hi kufta4, select the range you want to apply to (say from A2:A10)
in Excel 2007 & above, go to Home -> Conditional Formatting -> New Rule -> Use a formula to determine which cells to format -> Format values where this formula is true:
=COUNTIF($A2,"*~**")

format the color desired. Then press OK.

to explain, "*" is a wildcard. if you use this below, you are looking for ANY kind of text.
=COUNTIF($A2,"*")

"~" is a character to tell excel that the next character is a literal character you wish to find. that makes "*" on the right of it no longer a wildcard. but note that this is like finding if A2 IS EQUALS to "*".
=COUNTIF($A2,"~*")

to find whether A2 CONTAINS "*", add in 2 wildcards in front and behind.
=COUNTIF($A2,"*~**")

I ended up using the this cell contains option and did the ~* to highlight Texas* instead of the numbers. I couldn't seem to get that to work but highlighting Texas* honestly does enough. Thanks for the help.