Excel find cells from range where search value is within the cell

Question

Once again I'm struggling to find my answer on Google, but I'm sure it must exist. Sorry if I come across as a novice: I am when it comes to Excel it seems!

What I'd like to be able to do is tell it to search a range, then find cells within that range that contain text that is in my search function. I don't need any kind of result from it other than either TRUE or >1 (if it matches, obviously).

In this instance I'm searching a RANGE that is comprised of years, one year in each cell, and trying to find cells in that range that contain a year from a list of years that are all in one cell.

Basically I'm wanting to use a function similar to the Search function I think.

=SEARCH(text to find, find within text)

However, I'd like it to do the opposite and find cells that contain some of the text within the source cell:

=SEARCH(find within text, text to find)

Or, more specifically

=SEARCH("2001,2002,2003,2004,2005", "2003")

Is this possible without the use of a Macro? I'd prefer to avoid it if at all possible. All cells in question are formatted as Text.

I have been experimenting with COUNTIF, but again it works in the reverse of what I need.

Sorry if this question is unclear. Hope someone can help, thanks in advance.

Joe

Answer 1

I'm sure there is a better way, but if I'm understanding correctly, you could try SUM in combination with an array formula (enter with Ctrl+Shift+Enter ):

=IF(SUM(IFERROR(FIND(A1:E1,G1),0))>0, "FOUND", "NOT FOUND")

Here, A1:E1 contained the individual years and G1 contained the single cell of years. This runs FIND on each cell in the range, returning a position if it finds a match in the target cell and returning 0 if not ( IFERROR is a 2007 function - if you don't have Excel 2007, we can rewrite). You then sum the results of the FIND function and if it is greater than 0, it means you found a match somewhere.