You can use the following formula to check if a cell in Excel contains one of several specific values:

=SUMPRODUCT(--ISNUMBER(SEARCH($E$2:$E$4,A2)))>0

This particular example checks if cell A2 contains any of the values in the range E2:E4.

If it does, then the formula returns TRUE.

Otherwise, the formula returns FALSE.

The following example shows how to use this formula in practice.

Example: Check if Cell Contains One of Several Values

Suppose we have the following dataset that contains information about points scored by various basketball players:

Suppose we would like to check if each cell in column A contains either the name Mavs, Jazz or Nets.

We can use the following formula to do so:

=SUMPRODUCT(--ISNUMBER(SEARCH($E$2:$E$4,A2)))>0

We’ll type this formula into cell C2 and then click and drag it down to each remaining cell in column C:

If a cell in column A contains one of the three teams of interest, then the corresponding cell in column C returns TRUE.

Otherwise, the cell in column C returns FALSE.

If you would like to return values other than TRUE or FALSE, you can wrap the formula in an IF function:

=IF(SUMPRODUCT(--ISNUMBER(SEARCH($E$2:$E$4,A2)))>0, "Yes", "No")

We’ll type this formula into cell C2 and then click and drag it down to every remaining cell in column C:

Each value in column C now returns “Yes” or “No” to indicate if the value in the corresponding cell in column A contains one of the three teams of interest.

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in Excel: