Find formula with multiple find (array)

Hello Excel Gurus,

I'm just wondering if there's a possibility to have lists of strings to search in the find function in excel?

As all of you know, the find function is FIND(find_text, within_text, [start_num])

In the 'find_text', is it possible to have a list to search in the given cell?

For example, I'm trying to find the special character in Italics (!@#$%^&*()-=_+,./<>?;':"[]{})in a given cell.

I tried to have {} and Ctrl+SHIFT+ENTER but it gives me an error.

So you want something like:
=MIN(FIND("(", within_text, [start_num]),FIND("!", within_text, [start_num]),FIND("@", within_text, [start_num]),...)

I don't think there is a clean way of doing that with standard Excel functions, but I may be pleasantly surprised by some of the experts. I just wanted to make sure I (and others) understood your request.

Pauley

Hi Pauleyb,

I don't understand the purpose of the MIN function there, but yes, you got the idea there. So basically, instead of writing FIND for each of the special characters, I want to have 1 FIND function, with an arrays of special characters to find under the 'find_text' argument.

I've solved it with the use of Lookup and Find. Of course, this is through googling and found an older post that someone tried to accomplish similar of what I want.