Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: A Fast Find-Next.

A Fast Find-Next

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated October 21, 2023)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365


2

You already know how to find information in an Excel worksheet by using the searching features built into the program. Using the Find tool (press Ctrl+F) you can search for just about anything in your worksheet. I find myself using Find quite often in the course of editing a worksheet, particularly if the worksheet is quite large.

There is one thing about Find that bothers me, however. I hate having the Find and Replace dialog box block part of my worksheet as I am stepping through occurrences of a search string. Clicking on Find Next works great, but that bothersome dialog box is still blocking my view.

To overcome this, I generally do the following when I am searching for something:

  1. Press Ctrl+F as normal, specifying what I want to search for and then looking for the first occurrence.
  2. When the first occurrence is displayed, I press the Esc key (or click on Cancel). The Find and Replace dialog box disappears.
  3. To find the next occurrence, I press Shift+F4.

This procedure works the same as clicking Find Next repeatedly, and it is just as fast, but it gets rid of the annoying Find dialog box.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (3426) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: A Fast Find-Next.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Breaking a Document Link

Word allows you to link external information into your documents. If you no longer need to maintain the active link, you ...

Discover More

Printing a Full Style Sheet

Word supports the use of styles (they are very powerful), but it doesn't provide a way to get a full-featured style sheet ...

Discover More

Changing Number Display Settings for Single Workbooks

How Excel displays numbers is extremely flexible, but it can also be very confusing. This tip looks at how number display ...

Discover More

Best-Selling VBA Tutorial for Beginners Take your Excel knowledge to the next level. With a little background in VBA programming, you can go well beyond basic spreadsheets and functions. Use macros to reduce errors, save time, and integrate with other Microsoft applications. Fully updated for the latest version of Office 365. Check out Microsoft 365 Excel VBA Programming For Dummies today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Searching for Dates

If you use a worksheet that contains dates, you might want to search for those dates at some point. This isn't as simple ...

Discover More

Replacing Tildes at the Beginning of a Cell

Replacing a specific character (such as a tilde) seems a simple task, until you need to replace it only in a certain ...

Discover More

Searching for Leading Apostrophes

Take a look at the Formula bar when you select a cell that contains text, and you may see an apostrophe at the beginning ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 9 - 7?

2023-10-24 01:37:00

Michael van der Riet

Thank you Allen and J.Woolley. One of those "Why Didn't I Think Of That?" moments that make me realize I'm not as smart as I thought I was!


2023-10-23 11:25:20

J. Woolley

After Ctrl+F to Find, you can use either Shift+F4 or Ctrl+Y (Repeat) to Find Next. And you can use Ctrl+Shift+F4 to Find Previous followed by Ctrl+Y to Repeat that.


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.