Lesson 28 · Text

FIND & SEARCH

Locate text inside a cell with FIND and SEARCH in Google Sheets, then extract parts like email usernames.

Task 1 of 3

At what position is the @ in the email in A2? Answer in B2.

Tip: while typing a formula, click a cell or drag across cells to insert references. Press Enter to check, and Tab to accept a function suggestion.

Locating text inside a cell

=FIND(search_for, text_to_search, [starting_at])
=SEARCH(search_for, text_to_search, [starting_at])

Both return the position where the text first appears. The difference: FIND is case-sensitive, SEARCH is not. If the text isn't there, both return #VALUE!.

The real use is feeding that position into LEFT, RIGHT or MID to split text that doesn't have a fixed length:

=LEFT(A2, FIND("@", A2) - 1)   → username of an email

The - 1 stops just before the @.