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FIND()

Returns the position of a substring within a string. Case-sensitive.

Syntax
fx
=FIND(search_for, text_to_search, [starting_at])
Arguments
ArgumentDescription
search_forThe string to look for within text_to_search.
text_to_searchThe text to search for the first occurrence of search_for.
[starting_at]The character within text_to_search at which to start the search.
Example
fx
=FIND("o", "Hello")

Paste this into Google Sheets to run it. The live playground on this site covers 24 of the 61 functions, and FIND isn't one of them yet.

Common pitfalls

  • Case-SENSITIVE: use SEARCH for case-insensitive matching.
  • Returns #VALUE! if the substring isn't found, NOT zero. Wrap with IFERROR for an integer fallback.
  • Doesn't support wildcards. For pattern matching, use REGEXMATCH / REGEXEXTRACT.
Related formulas
SEARCH()
Returns the position of a substring within a string. Case-insensitive.
MID()
Returns a segment of a string starting at a given position, for a given length.
REGEXMATCH()
Returns TRUE if a piece of text matches a regular expression.
Used by
SEARCH()
Returns the position of a substring within a string. Case-insensitive.
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