Why can’t Ctrl-F find it?

[sammipd]

My spreadsheet is A:1 – DG:1943, three of the columns are text heavy with a couple of paragraphs in each cell. In the past, I’ve always selected the three columns and Ctrl-F to find specific words. Yesterday Excel couldn’t find the data, and I knew it was there. Today it can find the data.
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It was, of course, time sensitive and I used another system to find what I needed, but that system is scheduled for deletion.
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This problem was not specific to the one spreadsheet, but to others I also tried. Why could Excel not find the data yesterday and what can I do about it?
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I’m using Excel 2007.
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Thanks!

 

[texasalynn]

there is a drop down box that has "formula" or "text". Change that when the data you know is there but Excel can't find it.

 

[sammipd]

It can find the text when set to Formula or Value, but not when set to Comments. The settings today were the same as yesterday but with different results.

I had several spreadsheets open yesterday as I often do, could there be some sort of overload I hit that resulted in Ctrl-F not working?

My backup system will be going away and I need to be able to tell if Excel can't find data because its not there, or because Excel is having an issue. How can I tell?