Find

Find may refer to any of the following:

1. Find describes locating a specified text, file, document, or other objects on a computer, in a file, or on the Internet. For example, press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+F now to open a find window and search for any text on this page. In Microsoft Word, press Ctrl+F to find specific text in a document.

Generally, looking for text in a current document is called "find." However, to look for text in multiple documents or pages, it is called a "search" instead of find.

What can I find?

You can find any letters, numbers, or other characters in a document, web page, or file using the find option. If the search feature supports regular expressions, you could use regular expressions to find a pattern or condition of text. For example, you could search for all files starting with the letter "C."

What is the find symbol?

Software programs and keyboard keys may have a magnifying glass representing the find feature. For example, a program may have a magnifying glass icon that, when clicked, opens find.

• What are the most common symbols used by computers?

2. In a command line such as MS-DOS, Linux, or Unix, find is a command to help find information. See the command pages below for your operating system.

• See the find command page for MS-DOS and Windows command line commands.
• Information on the Linux command is available on our Linux find command page.

3. In Microsoft Excel and spreadsheets, FIND is a function that finds the starting position of a specific character, word, or number in a cell value. For example, using the following formula, if cell A3 contains the words "Computer Hope is awesome," the formula returns a value of 10, the starting position of the word Hope.

=FIND("Hope",A3)

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