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Excel advanced filter Wildcards acting weird|General Excel Questions & Answers|Excel Forum|My Online Training Hub

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Excel advanced filter Wildcards acting weird
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Csanád Stocker

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November 5, 2020 - 7:19 pm
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Hello!

I hope someone could help me with this issue, I've been struggling with it a lot.

I'm trying to use advanced filter in excel, which generally looks for exact matches, but you can use wildcards, like "*".

The problem emerges when I put an * to the beginning of the searched text. For some strange reason, it also allows everything after the searched text.

E.g.:

I search for: "* - xyproductname"

Expected result to return: "This is a question - xyproductname"

Expected result to not return: "This is a question - xyproductname and some more random text"

But it returns both!

Do you know why that could be? Thanks in advance! 

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Anders Sehlstedt
Eskilstuna, Sweden

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November 5, 2020 - 8:40 pm
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Hello,

You don’t specify what function you use, but as you use wildcards I assume you use the SEARCH function.

A good article to read about searching in Excel is found here.
As mentioned in the article, the syntax for the SEARCH function is =SEARCH(find_text, witin_text, [start_num]).

But as SEARCH function gives the position number of the first character when found a match, I doubt I’m correct in my assumption.

Best is if you can provide a sample file so we can see exactly what you are trying to do, makes it easier for all of us.

Br,
Anders

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Fluff
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November 6, 2020 - 12:46 am
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To filter for something that ends with use it like

="=* - xyproductname"

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Velouria
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November 6, 2020 - 7:01 pm
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FYI, you are slightly mistaken in your belief that advanced filter generally looks for exact matches. For text values, it actually looks for anything beginning with your criterion unless you use a comparison operator like =, as Fluff suggested.

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