# Excel: Why can't you search on tildes?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-why-cant-you-search-on-tildes/473867>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 21, 2008, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-why-cant-you-search-on-tildes/473867 "2008-11-21T17:17:59Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\
**Post date:** [November 21, 2008, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-why-cant-you-search-on-tildes/473867/1 "2008-11-21T17:17:59Z")

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This doesn’t come up very often, but sometimes I need to delete tiles (~) in a file. But Find won’t find them. Why?

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**Author:** ![BubbaDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bubbadog/32/333_2.png) [@BubbaDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BubbaDog)\
**Post date:** [November 21, 2008, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-why-cant-you-search-on-tildes/473867/2 "2008-11-21T17:28:51Z")

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type a double tilde in the search box

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**Author:** ![BubbaDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bubbadog/32/333_2.png) [@BubbaDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BubbaDog)\
**Post date:** [November 21, 2008, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-why-cant-you-search-on-tildes/473867/3 "2008-11-21T17:31:40Z")

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Oh wait - you want to know why too -

The tilde is used to indicate that the next character is a literal.

so if you wanted to remove other special characters like \* or ? you would put a tilde in front of them in the search box ~? or ~\*.

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**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\
**Post date:** [November 21, 2008, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-why-cant-you-search-on-tildes/473867/4 "2008-11-21T17:32:36Z")

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Yep. The tilde is used as a wildcard to signify “no, really, find the next thing after this tilde”, so you can search for what would otherwise be a wildcard, such as a question mark, asterisk, or, in this case, a tilde.

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**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\
**Post date:** [November 21, 2008, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-why-cant-you-search-on-tildes/473867/5 "2008-11-21T17:32:41Z")

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I’ll try that next time. (This time I inserted a column and did text-to-columns.)

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**Author:** ![gigi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a587f6/32.png) [@gigi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gigi)\
**Post date:** [November 21, 2008, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-why-cant-you-search-on-tildes/473867/6 "2008-11-21T17:33:55Z")

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Use ~~ to find tildes, ~? to find question marks, etc.

D’oh! Too late.

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**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\
**Post date:** [November 21, 2008, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excel-why-cant-you-search-on-tildes/473867/7 "2008-11-21T17:46:42Z")

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**Ethilrist** : Thanks for that. (And you, **BubbaDog**.) A lot of data has asterisks in it and they’re a small pain. (I’ve been doing the insert and text-to-columns thing.) I’m sure I’ll have the opportunity to try the ~\* soon.