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# SEARCH

Returns the position of a text segment within a character string. You can set the start of the search as an option. The search text can be a number or any sequence of characters. The search is not case-sensitive. If the text is not found, returns error 519 (#VALUE).

The search supports wildcards or regular expressions. With regular expressions enabled, you can enter "all.*", for example to find the first location of "all" followed by any characters. If you want to search for a text that is also a regular expression, you must either precede every regular expression metacharacter or operator with a "\" character, or enclose the text into \Q...\E. You can switch the automatic evaluation of wildcards or regular expression on and off in LibreOfficeDev - Preferences Tools - Options - LibreOfficeDev Calc - Calculate.

When using functions where one or more arguments are search criteria strings that represents a regular expression, the first attempt is to convert the string criteria to numbers. For example, ".0" will convert to 0.0 and so on. If successful, the match will not be a regular expression match but a numeric match. However, when switching to a locale where the decimal separator is not the dot makes the regular expression conversion work. To force the evaluation of the regular expression instead of a numeric expression, use some expression that can not be misread as numeric, such as ".[0]" or ".\0" or "(?i).0".

#### Syntax

SEARCH("FindText"; "Text" [; Position])

FindText is the text to be searched for.

Text is the text where the search will take place.

Position (optional) is the position in the text where the search is to start.

#### Example

=SEARCH(54;998877665544) returns 10.

Related Topics

SEARCH wiki page.

Text Functions