The Excel FIND function returns the position of one text string inside another — "where is the hyphen?" — counted from 1. It is case-sensitive and takes wildcards literally, which makes it the precise twin of SEARCH. Alone it answers "is X in here, and where?"; feeding LEFT, MID, and RIGHT, it powers nearly every classic text-extraction formula.
=IFERROR(FIND("-", A2), 0).
Syntax
| Argument | Description | |
|---|---|---|
find_text | Required | The text to locate. Matched exactly, including case. An empty string returns 1. |
within_text | Required | The string to look inside. |
start_num | Optional | Position to start looking from (default 1). Use it to skip past an earlier occurrence and find the next one. |
Available in: every version of Excel. Three rules set FIND apart: it is case-sensitive ("excel" will not match "Excel"), it treats ? and * as literal characters, not wildcards, and it returns #VALUE! when the text isn’t found. Need the opposite behavior? That’s SEARCH.
Locate a character’s position
These codes have prefixes of different lengths, so a fixed LEFT(A2, 2) fails. FIND measures where the hyphen actually is, and LEFT uses it:
| A | B | C | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Code | Hyphen at | Prefix |
| 2 | TX-0042 | 3 | TX |
| 3 | OKLA-1187 | 5 | OKLA |
| 4 | NM-0916 | 3 | NM |
The third argument finds later occurrences — start looking just past the first hit:
Try it: FIND vs SEARCH, live
Search inside Excel sale: 20% off excel-2026.xlsx. Flip between FIND and SEARCH to see case-sensitivity and wildcards change the answer.
FIND inside extraction formulas
FIND’s real job is feeding positions to the extraction functions. The big three patterns:
As a case-sensitive "does it contain?" test — here, flag codes carrying an uppercase "R" flag but not a lowercase "r":
The ISNUMBER wrapper is essential: FIND errors rather than returning 0 on a miss, and ISNUMBER turns hit/miss into TRUE/FALSE.
Modern alternative: for the extractions themselves, Excel 365’s TEXTBEFORE, TEXTAFTER, and TEXTSPLIT skip the position math entirely. FIND still rules case-sensitive tests and pre-365 workbooks.
Errors & common pitfalls
#VALUE! — text not found. FIND’s signature error. Either the text genuinely isn’t there, or it is there in different case ("excel" vs "Excel"). Fixes: wrap in IFERROR(…, 0), test with ISNUMBER, or switch to case-insensitive SEARCH.
#VALUE! — bad start_num. start_num must be at least 1 and no greater than the length of within_text. Nested-FIND formulas hit this when the first FIND lands at the very end of the string.
Pitfall: wildcards don’t work — by design. =FIND("?", A2) looks for a literal question mark. If you typed * or ? expecting pattern matching, you want SEARCH.
Pitfall: FIND only reports the first match (at or after start_num). To reach the 2nd occurrence, nest: =FIND("-", A2, FIND("-", A2) + 1). For the last occurrence, the classic trick swaps it for a unique marker with SUBSTITUTE first — or Excel 365’s TEXTAFTER with -1 does it directly.
Practice workbook
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between FIND and SEARCH?
? * as literal characters; SEARCH ignores case and supports those wildcards. Same arguments, same outputs otherwise. Use FIND when capitalization carries meaning, SEARCH the rest of the time.How do I check if a cell contains specific text?
=ISNUMBER(FIND("rush", A2)) returns TRUE or FALSE (case-sensitively). FIND alone returns a position on a hit but #VALUE! on a miss, so it can’t sit in an IF by itself.Why does FIND return #VALUE!?
IFERROR(FIND(…), 0) to fail gracefully.How do I find the second or third occurrence?
=FIND("-", A2, FIND("-", A2) + 1) finds the second hyphen. Third occurrence: nest once more. Beyond that, SUBSTITUTE’s instance_num argument is cleaner.Can I use wildcards with FIND?
? and * as ordinary characters to hunt for. That makes it the right tool for finding literal question marks and asterisks. For pattern matching, use SEARCH, where ? is any character, * any run, and ~ escapes a literal.Is FIND faster than SEARCH?
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