Wildcards are characters that you can use to represent one or more characters. You can use the wildcards ? (question mark), * (asterisk), and ~ (tilde) to match one or more other characters in an expression.
Use the ? character to match a single character in an expression that allows conditions. For example:
“Ea?” matches any string beginning with “Ea” and containing exactly one additional character such as “Ea2” or “Eac”.
“Th??” matches any string beginning with “Th” and containing exactly two additional characters such as “Then” and “That”.
=COUNTIF(B2:E7,“?ip”) returns a count of the number of cells in the range B2:E7 that contain a value that starts with a character followed by “ip” such as “rip” and “tip.” It doesn’t match “drip” or “trip.”
Use the * character to match any number of characters, including none, in an expression that allows conditions. For example:
“*ed” matches a string of any length ending with “ed” such as “Ted” or “Treed”.
=COUNTIF(B2:E7,“*it”) returns a count of the number of cells in the range B2:E7 that contain a value that ends with “it” such as “bit” and “mit.” It doesn’t match “mitt.”
Use the ~ character to specify that the following character should be matched rather than used as a wildcard, in an expression that allows conditions. For example:
“~?” matches the question mark, instead of using the question mark to match any single character.
=COUNTIF(E,“~*”) returns a count of the number of cells in column E that contain the asterisk character.
=SEARCH(“~?”,B2) returns 19 if cell B2 contains “That is a question? Yes it is!”, since the question mark is the 19th character in the string.