How to Use Wildcard Characters in Excel (Examples)

There are three wildcard characters in Excel:

1. * (asterisk) – It represents any number of characters. For example, ex* could mean excel, excels, example, expert, etc.

2. ? (question mark) – It represents one single character. For example, Tr?mp could mean Trump or Tramp.

3. ~ (tilde) – It is used to identify a wildcard character (~, *, ?) in the text. For example, let’s say you want to find the exact phrase excel* in a list.

In this tutorial, learn how to use Wildcard Characters in Excel.

Examples include:
- Counting Non-blank Cells using Wildcard Characters.
- Doing a Partial Look-up.
- To Find and Replace Partial Matches.
- To Filter using Wildcard Characters in Excel.


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[javedahmed]

Excellent explanation with example coupled with F9 key

[quan]

Great example! Now I know "*" can also mean 0 number of characters

[NatureVideo___]

You have an amazing knowledge of excel sir. Thank you for sharing :)

[MySpreadsheetLab]

Great Excel wildcard video (and post) Sumit !

[jagans]

Hi I need help, every day I have to type many due date and effective date in excel, while typing date am using slash for ex: mm/dd/yyyy can we make slash should default come in excel have to type only num slash shd automatically please help

[racheldavis]

For the Vlookup function, is there a way to go the opposite way (i.e, look up ABC ltd and get ABC?)

[Berghiker]

How do I look-up one word in a sentence within one cell? It must also highlight the word.

[JamesBond-qggx]

It’s better if you increase the view size of your excel because it is very small for us if we view in mobile