Wildcard
A wildcard is a special character that let's you "fuzzy" matching in your Excel formulas. For example, this formula:
=COUNTIF(B5:B11,"*combo")
counts alls cells in the range B5:B11 that end with the text "combo". And this formula:
=COUNTIF(A1:A100,"???")
Counts all cells in A1:A100 that contain exactly 3 characters.
Available wildcards
Excel has 3 wildcards you can use in your formulas:
- Asterisk (*) - matches one or more characters of any kind
- Question mark (?) - matches any one character
- Tilde (~) - escapes a wildcard to match a literal asterisk (~*) a literal question mark (~?), or a literal tilde (~~).
Compatible functions
Not all functions allow wildcards. Here is a list of the most common functions that do:
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