Table of Contents

SeaTable formulas offer you several ways to work with the data in your tables. One possibility is to search for words in a text. By entering an appropriate formula you can automatically search a text column for any words and have a hint - e.g. “word found/not found” - written as a result in a formula column of your table.

Search for a word in a text

In the concrete example, the goal is to search for a word in the text column “Request” using a formula.

Example table for searching words in a text using a formula

To do this, first add a formula column to the table, in whose editor you can then insert the formula.

Entering the formula in the text field provided for this purpose

To search for a word in a text column, first add an If operator to the formula, which you can find in the formula editor under the Logical Functions tab. It examines whether a defined condition is true or not and returns a certain value depending on the positive or negative result.

Adding the “if” function to the formula.

In the next step you extend the formula with the function find, with the help of which the text column can be searched for a specific word. You can find the function in the formula editor at the text functions.

Adding the “find” text function to the formula

The two functions are followed in the formula by the specific word you want to search for in the text column. Write the word in quotation marks in the formula.

Adding the word you are looking for in the text column

The next part of the formula is the name of the column that should be checked for the presence of the searched word. It is especially important that the column name is enclosed in curly braces, otherwise SeaTable will not be able to recognize which text should be checked using the formula.

Adding the column name to be checked for the presence of the searched word

Hinter dem Spaltennamen fügen Sie die mathematische Gleichung “1 > 0” ein. Diese ist für die Formel von Bedeutung, da Sie angibt, dass ein spezifischer Wert zurückgegeben wird, sobald das gesuchte Wort mindestens einmal in der Text-Spalte gefunden wird. Achten Sie in der Formel darauf, die Klammer nach der ersten Zahl zu schließen. Die Vergleichszeichen ( > , < , = , etc.) finden Sie im Formeleditor unter Operatoren.

Adding the mathematical equation to complete the condition

Finally, you define in the formula the values that are returned to you in the formula column for finding or not finding the searched word in the text. The first value entered always appears in the formula column if the searched word was found in the text, the second value in the opposite case. Always place the values in quotation marks and separate them with a comma.

Add the values that will be returned if the searched word is present or absent in the formula column.

Before confirming, it is still important to note that you must close the parenthesis so that the formula is accepted as valid.

End the formula with the closing of the parenthesis

After confirming the entered formula, you can see from the value in the formula column whether the searched word was found in the text column.

The formula result appears automatically in the formula column after confirming the formula

Formula example: Merging text columns with the help of a formula Formula example: Simple multiplication with a formula