How to find and replace the character "*" in Excel

Question

I am trying to find and replace the * (star, or shift+8) character in a bunch of formulas in Excel 2007. * of course matches the ENTIRE contents of the cell, which is not what I want. How do I disable this behavior?

Answer 1

Find and Replace (CTRL + H)

Search for ~*

Replace with whatever.

Cheers!

Answer 2

If you are doing this in code, you can look for CHAR(42), which is the numeric code for the * symbol.

Depending on how you do it, you should even be able to use the CHAR(42) in a worksheet formula.