if function for finding specific cells in formulae

**FDibbins** · 05-22-2015, 12:13 AM

Can that be done?

Not with regular formulas. excel formulas work on what is displayed, not what the underlying formula is.

You can test this by using =LEFT(A1,3) when A1 contains =SUM(B1:B10)...

	A	B	C
1	5500	100	550
2		200
3		300
4		400
5		500
6		600
7		700
8		800
9		900
10		1000

If =SUM(B1:B10) shows 5500, then =LEFT(A1,3) will only show 550, not =SU

What exactly are you trying to do here?

**Tassss** · 05-22-2015, 12:42 AM

I have a long list of different ingredient mixtures in these formulas. They are all foodstuff. The value produced is the overall protein content. However, other factors apart from protein are also relevant so I need to know which of these mixtures contain certain components (let's say vegetables).

If I have to do that by hand it would take me ages and is prone to mistake. Also, I could not change the variables to look later eventually for different components.

So is there no way of finding out which formula links to which cells and use use that as criteria?