There isn’t exactly an Excel CONTAINS function out of the box. However the Excel PowerUps add-in for Excel 2010, Excel 2013, and Excel 2007 provides a function called pwrCONTAINS that will return a simple TRUE or FALSE value based on whether the string your interested in is within another string. You could do this by testing and nesting a couple other Excel functions. However, this add-in makes the check really simple.

Excel CONTAINS function: use pwrCONTAINS

The pwrCONTAINS function documentation is on this page.

As a simple example of an Excel CONTAINS function the formula may look like the following.

=pwrCONTAINS("error", B4)

This will return TRUE is cell B4 contains the word “error” in its text.

Here are some related posts:

Excel WEBSERVICE Function, plus ENCODEURL and FILTERXML Make a Useful Trio of Web Functions TEXTJOIN, SWITCH, IFS, MAXIFS, MINIFS, CONCAT Available for Excel 2013, 2010, 2007 SWITCH Function for Excel 2013, 2010, and 2007 IFS Function in Excel 2016, 2013, 2010 and 2007 How to get the formula of a cell in Excel