Search and highlight hits only in Column C

In an Excel 2010 worksheet I use three columns. I need a user to be able to input a word or phrase into a cell or input box, and have Excel highlight that word or phrase every place it occurs only in column C.

Can I do that with conditional formatting? Or do I need to use a function? Or do I need a macro? I've tried Googling and can't find a good solution.

If you only wanted to highlight the word or phrase (from within other text in the cell(s) ) then you would need a macro, and then it would have to be the foreground colour which is changed, as conditional formatting can only highlight a complete cell and background colours can only apply to a complete cell in Excel.

Hope this helps.

Pete

Thank you Pete_UK. Does anyone have a suggestion for a macro that does the following:

1. Prompts the user for a word or phrase.
2. Searches only column C for the word or phrase.
3. Highlights in red all occurrances of the word or phrase in column C.

The attached file shows how something similar can be achieved with conditional formatting. Enter a keyword or phrase in cell K1 (yellow), and if it is found in column C the whole cell is highlighted. The CF condition in cell C2 is:

=ISNUMBER(FIND($K$1,C2))

which makes it case-sensitive (try "the" and "The" in K1). If case is not important then you can change FIND to SEARCH.

Hope this helps.

Pete

I used Pete's sheet as sample and searched for "test".