Finding and reporting on content of neighboring cell for entire column

[textheavy]

This is my first time posting to this forum, and I am very new to working with Excel. I tried to find information through various searches, but I was not able to construct a good search query, due to my ignorance of the topic.

If you could read through the scenario I present and either help answer a specific item, or suggest a searches I could try, I would be grateful.


Here is what I am trying to do:

I have a spreadsheet with business contacts.

Each cell in Column F lists all of the subscriptions the person in the row has, as a list (array?) delimited by semi-colons. This information comes from a database.

I want to create a new column, Column G, in which each cell displays "TRUE" if Column F contains a specific subscription name.

For example, if F:30 contains the following list:
"*apples; *bananas; *cherries; *dates"

I want G:30 to look for "*bananas" and if it finds that term, it displays "TRUE," indicating that the user in that row is subscribed to "*bananas."

(I included the asterisk because we prefix all subscription names with the asterisk, and I thought it's something that might cause an issue at some point.)

I then want to hide Column F, so that what I wind up with is just a list of contacts, and an indication of whether or not they have a subscription to *bananas, regardless of any other subscriptions they might have.


These are the things I can't figure out on my own:

1. How to refer to the immediate neighboring cell for two entire columns. I.e., how to make any cell in Column G refer to its neighboring cell in Column F.

2. How to do the find. I tried "=FIND("*bananas",F2)>0" based on another search, but this just gave me the "#VALUE" display. Maybe this is due to the asterisk?

3. How to use the outcome of the FIND function to display a "TRUE" if there is a FIND result.


I really appreciate any guidance.

 

[textheavy]

Well, I figured out the "=FIND" issue. It gives the #VALUE! error message when the the FIND string is not in the targeted cell.

So now I can use that information to create Column H, which evaluates Column G for integers. If GX contains a value (other than #VALUE!), the HX should display "TRUE."

One step closer...

 

[RincewindWIZZ]

Col F5 - F50 contains the subscription data
Put the subscription name you are searching for in a cell (say E1)
Col G5 should then contain FIND(E$1,F5)
Gol H5 should then contain IF(Iserror(G5),"","TRUE")
or Not(Iserror(G5))
depending on what exactly you want.

 

[textheavy]

This is excellent. I think it's going to work.

One question that remains...

I want to do this for all cells in Cols F and G, and since this is going to become a template for files containing any number of record rows.

How can I ensure that each row will do this, no matter how many rows there are?

 

[textheavy]

Again, this is really frustrating for me, because I don't even know enough terminology to be sure I'm making myself clear.

What I'm asking is:

I don't know how many rows there will be in the spreadsheet, but I want to make sure that for each row, this formula works.

Thanks!