Excel Wildcard Characters in Formulas

You can use wildcard characters in Excel formulas for partial matches. Sometimes you don't know, or don't need to know the full cell content. That is where the wildcard characters step up.

This video tutorial shows 3 different examples of using wildcard characters in formulas. These include VLOOKUP, SUMIF, COUNTIF and also how to use the wildcards in a Conditional formatting formula.

There are three wildcard characters in Excel. The asterisk '*', question mark '?' and the tilde '~'. This video covers just the asterisk and question characters.

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[joem]

Great tip. Been using VLookup for years and never knew!

[SanjayKumar-yxgc]

Awesome & unique examples of wildcard characters, I have never seen before use to "*" in vookup value. Thanks you so much.

[lynxwomancat]

Another lesson learned! Thanks, Alan!

[antoniopesce]

Utterly brilliant, you have a gift mate . I seriously recommend you to pursue a career in teaching if you aren’t already one

[patriciaborgatta]

Awesome ! Very Well explained !! Thank you very much Alan!!! 😃

[bje]

Trying to do something similar to your "Partial Match vlookup" tab.


My scenario has short one or two word lookup in A2:B10 Cells D3 down to ~D1000 have longer phases like: "I would love to live in Liverpool, UK" or "I just came from Hamburg, Germany and had a blast". Return in cell E3 down to ~E1000, 24 for Liverpool, UK and 12 for Hamburg, Germany and so on... Basically trying to use A2:B10 as a lookup, displaying column B in column E where column A exists in column D.
Been searching or days, and your example is the closes so far to what I'm trying to accomplish.
Thanks in advance.

[sasavienne]

Thank you so much Alan.
I need a vba code which can loop through all your videos and writes a nice comment beneath every one of them. 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟

[sadanandsingh]

can you please guide? How can I use vlookup in opposite situation

[kpeyialale]

The video is okay. Just that the text in the video are blurry. can't really see the formula you are inputting

[frankconcilia]

Great tutorial but how do you use a wildcard character in an =if(or statement?
For example when you are referencing an empty cell or a cell with a specific character in it?

[abdanomer]

Great example of wildcard character, thank you
What about ~?

[sadanandsingh]

your explanation is very clear. It would be great if you help me in blow query