Chapter 4: Working with Excel Ranges and Tables
4
To search for a question mark or an asterisk, precede the character with a tilde (~). For example, the following search
string finds the text NONE:
~NONE~
If you need to search for the tilde character, use two tildes.
If your searches don’t seem to be working correctly, double-check these three options:Match Case If this check box is selected, the case of the text must match exactly. For
example, searching for smith does not locate Smith.
Match Entire Cell Contents If this check box is selected, a match occurs if the cell con-
tains only the search string (and nothing else). For example, searching for Excel doesn’t
locate a cell that contains Microsoft Excel. When using wildcard characters, an exact
match is not required.
Look In This drop-down list has three options: Values, Formulas, and Comments. The
Formulas option looks only at the text that makes up the formula or the contents of the
cell if there is no formula. The Values option looks at the cell value and the results, not the
text, of the formula. If, for example, Formulas is selected, searching for 900 doesn’t find a
cell that contains the formula =899+1 but will find a cell with a value of 900. The Values
option will find both of those cells.Copying or Moving Ranges
As you create a worksheet, you may find it necessary to copy or move information from
one location to another. Excel makes copying or moving ranges of cells easy. Here are some
common things that you might do:■ Copy a cell to another location.■ (^) Copy a cell to a range of cells. The source cell is copied to every cell in the destina-
tion range.
■ (^) Copy a range to another range.
■ Move a range of cells to another location.
The primary difference between copying and moving a range is the effect of the operation
on the source range. When you copy a range, the source range is unaffected. When you
move a range, the contents are removed from the source range.
Copying a cell normally copies the cell’s contents, any formatting that is applied to the original cell (including con-
ditional formatting and data validation), and the cell comment (if it has one). When you copy a cell that contains a
formula, the cell references in the copied formulas are changed automatically to be relative to their new destination.