What are wildcard characters What is the use of wildcard characters?

Excel Wildcard Characters

Wildcards in Excel are the special Excel characters that take the place of the characters in it. Excel has three wildcards: an asterisk, question mark, and tilde. Asterisk is used for multiple numbers of characters in Excel, while a question mark represents only a single character. In contrast, the tilde is the identification of the wild card character.

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Wildcard characters are special characters used to find the result, which is less than exact or accurate.

For example, if you have the word “Simple Chat.” In the database, you have “Simply Chat,” then the common letter in these two words is “Chat,” so we can match these with Excel wildcard characters.

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For eg:
Source: Wildcard in Excel (wallstreetmojo.com)

Types

There are three types of wildcard characters in Excel.

Type #1 – Asterisk (*)

It is to match zero or the number of characters. So, for example, “Fi*” could match “Final, Fitting, Fill, Finch, and Fiasco,” etc.

Type #2 – Question Mark (?)

It is used to match any single character. For example, “Fa? e” could match “Face” & “Fade,” “?ore” could match “Bore” & “Core,” “a? ide,” which could match “Abide” and “Aside.”

Type #3 – Tilde (~)

It is used to match wildcard characters in the word. So, for example, if you have the word “Hello*” to find this word, we need to frame the sentence as “Hello~*.” So here, the character tilde (~) specifies the word “Hello” as the wildcard character does not follow it.

Examples

Example #1 – Usage of Excel Wildcard Character Asterisk (*)

As we discussed, an asterisk is used to match any number of characters in the sentence.

1. Look at the below data.

   
   

2. In the above data, we have names. With these names, we have many names with the common word “Abhishek.” So, using a wildcard asterisk, we can count all the “Abhishek” here. Open the COUNTIF function and select the range.

   
   

3. In the criteria argument, mention the criteria as “Abhishek*.”

   
   

4. That is all. It will count all the words “Abhishek” in them.

   
   

Example #2 – Partial Lookup Value in VLOOKUP

VLOOKUP requires an exact lookup_value to be matched to fetch the data. It is the traditional slogan, but we can still fetch the data using particle lookup_value. So, for example, if the lookup value is “VIVO” and in the main table, if it is “VIVO Mobile,” we can still match using wildcard characters. We will see one of the examples now. Below is the example data.

We have a lookup table in column A. In column C, we have lookup values. These lookup values are not the same as the lookup table values. So, we will see how to apply VLOOKUP using wildcards.

First, open the VLOOKUP functionThe VLOOKUP excel function searches for a particular value and returns a corresponding match based on a unique identifier. A unique identifier is uniquely associated with all the records of the database. For instance, employee ID, student roll number, customer contact number, seller email address, etc., are unique identifiers. read more in the D1 cell.

The first argument is the lookup value. One of the problems with the lookup value here is we do not have an exact match, so we need to enclose this lookup value with an asterisk before and after the lookup value.

We have applied two asterisk characters, “*” &C2&”*.” Here, an asterisk indicates that we should match anything between the wildcard, and it should return the related result.

Even though we had just “Infosys,” the asterisk character matched the value in the lookup table and returned the exact result as “Infosys Ltd.”

Similarly, in cell D6, we got the error value as #VALUE#VALUE! Error in Excel represents that the reference cell the user has either entered an incorrect formula or used a wrong data type (mostly numerical data). Sometimes, it is difficult to identify the kind of mistake behind this error.read more! Because there is no word “Mintra” in the lookup tableLookup tables are simply named tables that are used in combination with the VLOOKUP function to find any data in a large data set. We can select the table and name it, and then type the table's name instead of the reference to look up the value.read more.

Example #3 – Usage of Excel Wildcard Character Question Mark (?)

As we discussed, the question mark can match a single character in the specified slot. For example, look at the below data.

In the above data, our ideal value should be “Wallstreet Mojo,” but we have several special characters in between. So, we will use the question mark to replace all of those.

Select the data and press “Ctrl + H.”

In the “Find what” box, type “Wallstreet?Mojo.” In the “Replace with” box, type “Wallstreet Mojo.”

Click on Replace All. We will get the below result.

Nice, isn’t it??

The trick is done here by Excel wildcard character question mark (?). First, let us take a look at what we have mentioned.

Find What: “Wallstreet?Mojo”

Replace With: “Wallstreet Mojo”

So, after the word Wallstreet any character that the space character should replace. So, all the special characters are replaced by a space character, and we will have a proper value of “Wallstreet Mojo.”

Like this, by using wildcard characters, we can match partial data and get the job done.

Recommended Articles

This article has been a guide to Wildcard in Excel. Here, we discuss the three different types of wildcard characters – Asterisk (*), Question Mark(?) & Tilde(~) in Excel, along with examples and a downloadable Excel template. You may also look at these useful functions in Excel: –

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