Since the popularization of personal computers, Excel has become a very, if not the most popular, spreadsheet application to date. Excel has an array of functions and commands, which makes data storage and analysis very effective and powerful. This also makes it possible for a user to search inside Excel when faced with a multitude of data.
Every worksheet in one Excel file has a minimum of 16,777,216 million cells, depending on the version, where data can be stored. Each cell has the capacity to store 32,767 characters and the number of worksheets you can create in a file can go on and on for as long as a personal computer's memory can handle. If you encounter a file that has a multitude of data, Excel's search function simplifies your task by zeroing in on the cells, which store the characters you are looking for.
The Find and Replace function in the Edit tab allows a user to do a series of options on how to search for a text or number. Once the Find and Replace dialog box appears, the simplest task is to type the characters you are looking for within one worksheet and then clicking the Find All button. After Excel goes through all the cells, it presents all the cells where the text or number appears, whether independently or as part of a whole word or set of numbers. For instance, if you instruct Excel to locate the number 29, the search results will include cells with the number 11.29 or 229. The first cell where the word or number appears first is highlighted. The Find Next button allows the user to directly go to the next cell where the characters appear again. Searching in a specific block of cells is also possible by highlighting such, after which the Find and Replace function can then be executed.
Excel also allows its user to search through all worksheets within a file. The options button in the dialog box also allows a search to be more specific by selecting several conditions: by row and by column and in values, comments, or formulas. It can also go as far as looking for the cell, which contains only the exact word or number being located. This function, however, is limited to just one workbook.
The built-in search function of Excel is good enough for a user who seldom uses it or does not need to search through a large number of cells. Otherwise, the user would find that the search process is relatively slow and requires a lot of time clicking the Find Next button. Even a 10-second time requirement is considered long for users who literally have to search a particular data in a haystack of cells. As such, several programmers have developed different versions of search programs that speed up the search task. Add-ins require all Excel workbooks where data is suspected to be stored should be open. An add-in locates all the cells and reflects them in one window. Through add-ins, executing data changes or analysis becomes comprehensive. There are also different versions of external software that search through all Excel files without having to open them. This kind of software is more comprehensive and allows the extraction of relevant data for processing, analysis, and presentation.
Storing and processing data is essential in making sound and precise analytical outputs. For a user that needs to regularly search inside Excel in order to evaluate stored data, it is important to assess the available options that would make the job easier, more convenient, and highly efficient.
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