Wildcard character not behaving as expected...

[Matty]

Hi,

I'm perplexed (not unusual for me!). Why does the following return FALSE?

A1: Matty1
A2: ="Matty"&"?"=A1

If I use "Matty"&"?" within a MATCH formula, it behaves as it expected, with the value being found.

Thanks,

Matty

 

[Joe4]

You cannot use Wildcards in a concatenation formula like that. It treats the question mark as literal text.

You can confirm this pretty easily for yourself. Just type the following in any cell and see:
="Matty" & "?"

If you wanted to see if a cell began with "Matty", I would use:
=IF(LEFT(stringvalue,5)="Matty",...,...)

 

[texasalynn]

try it like this

Excel Workbook
	A
4	Matty1
5	TRUE
Sheet4

Excel 2003

Cell Formulas
Range	Formula
A5	="Matty"=LEFT(A4,LEN(A4)-1)

 

[Matty]

Thanks Chaps.

I suspected this to be the case, but wanted to be sure I wasn't just missing something obvious!

I'd already considered the LEFT route and will now employ this option...

Thanks again.

Matty

 

[T. Valko]

Hi,

I'm perplexed (not unusual for me!). Why does the following return FALSE?

A1: Matty1
A2: ="Matty"&"?"=A1

If I use "Matty"&"?" within a MATCH formula, it behaves as it expected, with the value being found.

Thanks,

Matty

Here's another one...

=COUNTIF(A1,"matty*")>0

 

[Matty]

Thanks Biff.

Matty

 

[T. Valko]

Thanks Biff.

Matty

You're welcome!