![how to use microsoft excel formulas likeengineers do how to use microsoft excel formulas likeengineers do](https://media.geeksforgeeks.org/wp-content/uploads/20210820154044/15.png)
It finds an exact match, which is 5 in this case. The usual VLOOKUP formula wouldn’t work in this scenario because the lookup value – Austin, does not have the exact match.īy inserting “*”, it tells Excel to look for any text that begins or ends with the lookup value in D3 – Austin, and it may have any number of characters after the text. In the example below, the task is to find out the number of delivery points for Austin. But instead of Austin, the list displays Austin, Texas.
#How to use microsoft excel formulas likeengineers do full
Sometimes, the exact, full value in the list is not available and only the partial content is known. This is where wildcard characters come in handy. In a normal circumstance, VLOOKUP looks up the exact value specified in a list and returns the corresponding value in a table. Here are some examples of how it works: 1.
![how to use microsoft excel formulas likeengineers do how to use microsoft excel formulas likeengineers do](https://cdn.corporatefinanceinstitute.com/assets/formula-function-1024x385.png)
Wildcard characters are commonly used in some basic Excel formulas, i.e., COUNTIF, COUNTIFS, VLOOKUP, FIND AND REPLACE, SEARCH, CONDITIONAL FORMATTING, etc. For example, “Aus~*” returns Aus* but not Australia or Austria like above. ~ (tilde) is used to literally indicate the asterisk and question mark characters as they are, as * or ?, instead of a wildcard character in the formula. For example, “p?n” returns pan, pen or pin. ? (question mark) represents one single character. For example “Aus*” returns Australia or Austria. * (asterisk) represents any number of characters.