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To check if a cell contains text from a list in Excel, you can use the VLOOKUP, or Vertical Lookup, function. This function will search for a specific value in the first column of a specified range and return a result from another column in the same row. For example, if you have a list of names in column A and you want to know if a specific cell contains one of those names, you can use the VLOOKUP function to search for that name and return the result in the cell.
You can use the following formula in Excel to check if a cell contains text from a list:
=IF(OR(COUNTIF(A1,"*"&$E$2:$E$8&"*")), "Yes", "No")
In this example, if cell A1 contains any of the text values in the range E2:E8 then it will return a Yes, otherwise it will return a No.
The following example shows how to use this formula in practice.
Example: Check if Cell Contains Text from List in Excel
Suppose we have the following dataset in Excel that shows the number of points scored by various basketball players:
There are three teams in the list from Texas: Mavs, Spurs, and Rockets.
Suppose we’d like to create a new column that tells us whether each team is from Texas or not.
First, we’ll create a list of the Texas teams in column E:
Then we’ll use the following formula to check if the value in the Team column contains any of the text values in column E:
=IF(OR(COUNTIF(A2,"*"&$E$2:$E$4&"*")), "Yes", "No")
We can type this formula into cell C2 and then copy and paste it down to the remaining cells in column C:
Notice that any row that contains Mavs, Spurs, or Rockets receives a value of Yes while all other rows receive a value of No.
Also note that we could return values other than “Yes” and “No.”
=IF(OR(COUNTIF(A2,"*"&$E$2:$E$4&"*")), "Texas", "Not Texas")
The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:
Notice that any row that contains Mavs, Spurs, or Rockets receives a value of Texas while all other rows receive a value of Not Texas.