Easy Ways to Search in XLS Files

When you are doing accounting work, what application do you use on your computer? It would not come as a surprise if you would say that you use the Excel application because this is certainly the popular tool used today. With the many figures you have to deal with, Microsoft Excel provides you millions and millions of cells and equally many operations and formulas to deal with all the data and figures you can imagine. But with all of these figures on your Excel or xls files, is it really possible to search for one particular figure? Yes, it actually is! There are actually many various ways to search in xls files!

There are actually more than 16 million cells found in the Excel application, and this is just the minimum figure because there are various versions of the application available so the figure here would also vary. More importantly, within each of these 16 million cells, more than 32,000 characters can be placed. So, 32,000 multiplied by 16 million, you can just imagine the multitude of data and figures the spreadsheet application can hold! So, just how do you start searching for particular data in your xls files?

The ideal thing to do is to use the built-in search functions of the application. A lot of people may not really find the built-in search functions handy at first bat, but they actually are. One particular function that is impressive all on its own is the Find and Replace. You get many functions with this function, even making your search as precise as you need it to be. These significantly narrow down your search, giving your faster and more accurate results. When the dialogue box of the Find and Replace function is activated, you can then type the characters or the figures that you are looking for. Once this is done, you can then hit the Find All tab so that the search engine can scour the xls file and then bring you back the cells that contain information relevant to your search. All of these cells would contain the figures inputted, whether it is the whole independent figure or just part of a group of characters or numbers.

For instance, if you are looking for the number “23”, then all cells that have 23 would be brought back. Cells that contain “23”, “563.23”, or even “723.098” would be brought back. Even the cells that contain letters would be brought back, as long as these also have 23 inside them. The first highlighted cell is actually the first that has the number “23” inside it. When you click the Find Next tab, this will then bring you to the next cell that contains “23”.

Another impressive thing about searching through the millions of cells inside an xls file is that you can actually search all worksheets within your file. You do not have to jump from one worksheet to another, just to find these pertinent figures.

There are indeed many ways for you to search in xls files stored in your computer. These are just the basics that you should be on the lookout.