counts all cells in the range B5:B11 that end with the text “combo”. And this formula: Counts all cells in A1:A100 that contain exactly 3 characters.
Available wildcards
Excel has 3 wildcards you can use in your formulas:
Asterisk () - zero or more characters Question mark (?) - any one character Tilde (~) - escape for literal character (~) a literal question mark (~?), or a literal tilde (~~).
Example wildcard usage
Wildcards only work with text. For numeric data, you can use logical operators. More general information on formula criteria here.
Compatible functions
Not all functions allow wildcards. Here is a list of the most common functions that do:
AVERAGEIF, AVERAGEIFS COUNTIF, COUNTIFS SUMIF, SUMIFS VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP MATCH SEARCH
Author
Dave Bruns
Hi - I’m Dave Bruns, and I run Exceljet with my wife, Lisa. Our goal is to help you work faster in Excel. We create short videos, and clear examples of formulas, functions, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and charts.
