Find or Search Data

Finding Cells Containing Specified Data

Using Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Excel allows users to find cells in a worksheet that contain specified data. If you select Edit from the Find menu in Microsoft Excel, you will see a dialog where you can specify the search value.

Here, we are looking for the value “Oranges”. Aspose.Cells also allows developers to find cells in the worksheet that contain specified values.

Using Aspose.Cells for Node.js via C++

Aspose.Cells provides a class, Workbook, that represents a Microsoft Excel file. The Workbook class contains a Workbook.getWorksheets() collection that allows access to each worksheet in the Excel file. A worksheet is represented by the Worksheet class. The Worksheet class provides a getCells() collection that represents all cells in the worksheet. The Cells collection provides several methods for finding cells in a worksheet containing user‑specified data. A few of these methods are discussed below in more detail.

Finding Cells Containing a Formula

Developers can find a specified formula in the worksheet by calling the Cells collection’s find method. Typically, the find method accepts three parameters:

  • Object: The object to search for. The type should be int, double, DateTime, string, or bool.
  • Previous cell: Previous cell with the same object. This parameter can be set to null if searching from the start.
  • FindOptions: Options for finding the required object.

The examples below use worksheet data to demonstrate the find methods:

Finding Data or Formulas using FindOptions

It is possible to find specified values using the Cells collection’s find(object, Cell) method with various FindOptions. Typically, the find method accepts the following parameters:

  • Search value: The data or value to be searched for.
  • Previous cell: The last cell that contained the same value. This parameter can be set to null when searching from the start.
  • Find options: The find options.

Finding Cells Containing Specified String Value or Number

It is possible to find specified string values by calling the same find method found in the Cells collection with various FindOptions.

Specify the FindOptions.setLookInType and FindOptions.setLookAtType properties. The following example code illustrates how to use these properties to find cells with various numbers of strings at the beginning, middle, or end of the cell’s text.

Advanced topics

Insert Hyperlinks into Excel or OpenOffice How and Where to Use Enumerators with Node.js via C++