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FIND

The FIND formula in Google Sheets searches for a specific text within another text and returns the position of the first occurrence of the text. This formula is often used to extract a substring from a larger string or to check if a certain text exists within another text.

Usage

Use the FIND formula with the syntax shown below, it has 2 required parameters and 1 optional parameter:

=FIND(search_for, text_to_search, [starting_at])
Parameters:
  1. search_for (required):
    The text you want to search for within the other text.
  2. text_to_search (required):
    The text or cell reference where you want to search for the specified text.
  3. starting_at (optional):
    The position within the text_to_search where you want to start the search. If omitted, the search starts at the beginning of the text_to_search.

Examples

Here are a few example use cases that explain how to use the FIND formula in Google Sheets.

Extracting a substring

By using the FIND formula, you can extract a substring from a larger string by specifying the starting position and the length of the substring.

Checking if a text exists

You can use the FIND formula to check if a certain text exists within another text. If the formula returns a value greater than zero, the text exists and the formula can be used to perform additional calculations or return a specific value.

Parsing data from a URL

The FIND formula can be used to parse data from a URL, such as extracting the domain name or query parameters.

Common Mistakes

FIND not working? Here are some common mistakes people make when using the FIND Google Sheets Formula:

Not using quotation marks for search_for parameter

The FIND formula requires the search_for parameter to be enclosed in quotation marks. If the search_for parameter is not enclosed in quotation marks, the formula will return an error value.

Specifying starting_at parameter incorrectly

The starting_at parameter for the FIND formula must be a number that represents the position within the text_to_search parameter to start the search. If the starting_at parameter is specified as a text value or is greater than the length of the text_to_search parameter, the formula will return an error value.

Related Formulas

The following functions are similar to FIND or are often used with it in a formula:

  • SEARCH

    The SEARCH formula is used to find the position of a piece of text within a larger string of text. It returns the position of the first character of the searched text in the text being searched. This formula is case-insensitive, meaning it will find all instances of the searched text regardless of capitalization.

  • LEFT

    The LEFT formula is used to extract a specific number of characters from the beginning of a text string. It is most commonly used to extract the first name or last name from a full name or to extract a date from a text string.

  • RIGHT

    The RIGHT formula in Google Sheets returns the rightmost characters from a string, based on the number of characters specified. It is commonly used to extract a certain number of characters from the end of a string. The formula takes two arguments: the string from which to extract the characters, and the number of characters to extract.

  • MID

    The MID formula in Google Sheets is used to extract a specific number of characters from a string, starting at a specified point. This is useful when working with large datasets and you only need a portion of the information in a cell. The formula takes in the string to extract from, the starting point, and the length of characters to extract as arguments.

  • LEN

    The LEN formula in Google Sheets is used to count the number of characters in a given text string. It is commonly used to check the length of text inputs, or to find the length of a cell value or range.

Learn More

You can learn more about the FIND Google Sheets function on Google Support.