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How to find and replace asterisk / question mark / tilde in Excel?

When you work with an Excel file, you want to find the cells which contain asterisk, question mark or tilde and replace the specific characters with other values. Most of you may consider directly entering the asterisk (*), question mark (?) or tilde (~) character into the Find text box and replace them. But in this way, you will get the wrong result. This article, I will talk about how to find and replace asterisk / question mark / tilde in Excel quickly and correctly.

Find and replace asterisk / question mark / tilde in Excel


arrow blue right bubble Find and replace asterisk / question mark / tilde in Excel

To find and replace these specific characters, you need to add a character tilde (~) before the asterisk, question mark or tilde in the Find what text box, please do with the following steps:

1. Select the range cells that you want to replace the specific characters.

2. Go to click Home > Find & Replace > Replace or you can press Ctrl + H shortcuts to open the Find and Replace dialog, see screenshot:

doc-replace-asterisk-1

3. In the Find and Replace dialog box, enter ~* into the Find what text box to find the cells which have the * character, and then type the value which you want to replace with in Replace with text box, see screenshot:

doc-replace-asterisk-1

4. Then click Replace All button in the dialog, and all asterisks have been replaced with the value you want.

doc-replace-asterisk-3 -2 doc-replace-asterisk-4

5. At last, close the Find and Replace dialog box.

Note: If you need to replace the question mark or tilde characters, you just enter ~? or ~~ into the Find what text box.


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How to find and replace text in chart titles in Excel?

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This comment was minimized by the moderator on the site
This does not work in WPS Office. How to find and replace a "tilde" symbol in WPS Office?
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Thank you! This was so helpful.
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