How to Search in Google Sheets

If you have a large spreadsheet on Google Sheets and you need to find something specific, you might be wondering how to search in Google Sheets. Fortunately, this is fairly simple, and there are several ways you can find what you’re looking for in your spreadsheet.

Here’s what you need to know about how to search in Google Sheets.

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How Do I Search Data in Google Sheets? 

If you want to search for information in Google Sheets, the first option you have is to use the “find in page” function on your browser. Different browsers work slightly differently, but they all have this option, and when you select it, a search box will open on the page, where you can type in the keyword you’re looking for.

The other option is to use the Find option, which is located on the Edit menu. Open this menu, then scroll down until you see “Find and Replace.” Use the dialog box to find the information you’re looking for on your sheet. Remember that you don’t have to find and replace if you don’t need to – you can select “find” only from the options in the dialog box.

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Is There a Search Function on Google Sheets? 

If you’re wondering how to search in Google Sheets using the functions built into the platform, you can use SEARCH and SEARCHB to find the first instance of a specific text string. The second option allows you to do the same but using binary.

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What Is the Shortcut for Search in Google Sheets? 

If you’re wondering how to search in Google Sheets using keyboard shortcuts, you can use CTRL. This will open the “find in page” box, which you can use to search the text in your spreadsheet for the text you want to find.

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How Do You Use the Find Function in Google Sheets? 

Like all other functions on Google Sheets, if you want to use the FIND function, you need to type a formula into your cell or the formula bar.

Google Sheets has two FIND functions: one is simply FIND, and the other is FINDB, which again is binary. These functions will search your text to find the first instance of a text string.

However, if you need to find all of the instances of the text, you’re better off using something like find in page or find and replace. Both of those allow you to skip forward and backwards to find the correct instance of the text string you’re looking for.

How to Search for Duplicates in Google Sheets? 

If you want to make sure that you don’t have duplicate information, for instance, if you’re creating a list of email contents, then there’s a simple answer to the question of how to search in Google Sheets, and that’s to use the built-in data validation tools.

Select the column you want to search for duplicates, and then click on the Data menu in the toolbar.

Scroll down until you see Data cleanup, and then click the flyout menu.

Select “Remove duplicates” and remember to expand the selection if you are asked – this ensures that any text in the columns alongside each duplicate entry will be removed too, and your spreadsheet will remain accurate.

Choose the options you want to apply from the popup dialog box, and then click remove duplicates. You should now have a spreadsheet that is free of duplicate entries.

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How to Search Text in Google Sheets 

If you’re wondering how to search in Google Sheets, you can use any of the options above to search for text in your spreadsheet. It really depends on what you want to do with the text when you find it.

If you just want to find something in your spreadsheet and don’t want to scroll looking for it, find in page is a great option.

If you need to replace the text you find with something else, then find and replace is the quickest and easiest option, and you can also use the SEARCH and FIND functions if you’re just trying to find the first instance of any text string.

Removing duplicates doesn’t give you search results, but it does automatically find and remove duplicate values, so you can clean up a list of information and only have one entry of each type.