Determine If A Cell Entry Is In A List And Return True

[wulliemc]

Hi, I'm a newbie.

How do I take a string in F3, check it against a list of strings in I3:I6, and return TRUE if it is, FALSE if it's not. Ultimately, I want to use this to conditionally format a cell.

I've googled and can see that you can pass an array as an argument to an IF statement, but I don't know if this is the most appropriate way, and if it is, I can't get it to work.

I haven't posted what I've tried because I don't even know if I am using the right approach, never mind if my formula is wrong...

TIA,

W

[Richard Schollar]

Hi

Do you mean something like:

=ISNUMBER(MATCH(F3,I3:I6,0))

?

Richard

[wulliemc]

ah, sorry, I now realise I should have been more precise. Your suggestion is exactly what I want to do, but the cells all contain text. rather than numbers. Is there a similar formula for text?

[Richard Schollar]

Yes - it's the exact same formula. Are you only looking for a partial match however? eg if F3 contains dog do you want it to only match against 'dog' or to 'doggone' as well?

Richard

[wulliemc]

only match dog, not doggone

[Richard Schollar]

It's the same formula in that case