I’m working on a Google Sheets project and I’m stuck. I’ve got a column with a mix of text cells and empty ones. What I’m trying to do is find the first time a specific word shows up, but here’s the catch – it doesn’t have to be an exact match. I know about Index and Match for exact stuff, but that’s not cutting it here. I tried playing around with the Search function, but it’s giving me trouble with ranges. Is there a way to do this with just formulas? I’m not looking to use any scripts. I’d really appreciate some help figuring out how to search for partial matches in a range and find the first one that fits the bill. Any ideas?
For partial text matches in Google Sheets, you might want to try the FILTER function combined with SEARCH. Here’s a formula that could work:
=ARRAYFORMULA(FILTER(A:A, SEARCH(“your_search_term”, A:A)))
This will return all cells in column A that contain your search term. To get just the first match, wrap it in an INDEX function:
=INDEX(ARRAYFORMULA(FILTER(A:A, SEARCH(“your_search_term”, A:A))), 1)
Replace “your_search_term” with the word you’re looking for. This should find partial matches without needing scripts. Hope this helps with your project!
I’ve dealt with similar issues in my spreadsheets. One approach that’s worked well for me is using a combination of MATCH and SEARCH functions. Here’s a formula I’ve found effective:
=MATCH(TRUE, ISNUMBER(SEARCH(“your_search_term”, A:A)), 0)
This returns the row number of the first partial match. If you need the actual cell content, just wrap it in an INDEX function:
=INDEX(A:A, MATCH(TRUE, ISNUMBER(SEARCH(“your_search_term”, A:A)), 0))
It’s been reliable for me across various datasets. Just remember to replace “your_search_term” with whatever you’re looking for. This method has saved me countless hours of manual searching. Give it a shot and see if it solves your problem!
hey samuel, i’ve run into this before. try using the query function. it’s pretty flexible for partial matches. something like this might work:
=query(A:A,“select A where A contains ‘your_word’ limit 1”)
replace ‘your_word’ with what youre looking for. it should grab the first match for ya. hope this helps!