The SEARCH function in Excel is used to find the position of a specific character or substring within a text string. It is case-insensitive, meaning it does not distinguish between uppercase and lowercase letters. The syntax for the SEARCH function is:

=SEARCH(find_text, within_text, [start_num])

• find_text: The text or substring you want to find.
• within_text: The text string in which you want to search.
• start_num (optional): The position in the within_text to start the search. If omitted, the search starts at the beginning.

Example 1: Find the position of “apple” in the text “I have an apple.”

=SEARCH("apple", "I have an apple.")

This will return 10, as “apple” starts at the 10th character.

Example 2: Find the position of “a” starting from the 5th character in “banana”.

=SEARCH("a", "banana", 5)

This will return 6, as the first “a” after the 5th character is at position 6.

Note: If the find_text is not found, the function returns a #VALUE! error.