SEARCH in SoftMaker PlanMaker: Find Text Without Case Matching

=SEARCH(SearchText, TextString [, StartPos])

The brackets in the documentation indicate an optional argument; do not enter [ ]. The English 2026 SoftMaker page uses commas between arguments and explicitly documents the first-character default and case-insensitive matching. In the examples, StartPos is a positive whole-number character position. The vendor page does not specify the results for zero, negative, fractional or out-of-range positions, an empty search string, or Unicode character-counting modes; those should not be inferred solely from Excel behaviour.

Enter these values exactly. Keep the product identifiers as text so their zeroes are preserved. Put formulas outside the raw-data range, beginning in E2.

The examples deliberately use only ASCII characters and avoid unusual whitespace. If a text import adds spaces, the reported locations change accordingly.

1. Verify that A2:A7 and B2:B7 match the example table.
2. Enter =SEARCH(B2,A2) into cell E2.
3. Expected E2: 9; the letters RED begin at character 9 in CA-2048-RED.
4. Fill E2 down through E7.

Compare FIND: On row 3, =FIND(B3,A3) instead gives #VALUE! because PlanMaker FIND is case-sensitive. The 2026 vendor manuals explicitly distinguish these functions. No result in this table was obtained by executing native PlanMaker; they are documentation-backed, independently calculated expectations.

The value 8 is not relative to the start position 4; positions are reported relative to the beginning of the entire TextString. SoftMaker’s own SEARCH("a","Banana",3) example returns 4.

Instead of allowing a missing search word to become #VALUE!, use the separately documented IFERROR function to turn an absent match into a non-position sentinel (0):

=IFERROR(SEARCH("red",A2),0)

Expected A2 result: 9. For A3 (US-0052-BLU) the equivalent expression is expected to return 0, because red is absent; the fallback is a design choice, not a result produced by SEARCH itself. The official IFERROR reference must be checked for an installation using the formula in production.

To return readable labels instead of numeric positions, enter in F2 and copy down:

=IF(IFERROR(SEARCH("red",A2),0)>0,"Red item","Other item")

Expected result: Red item for row 2, Other item for rows 3–7. Here the >0 test works because valid substring positions begin at 1, while the deliberately chosen fallback is 0. It is a contains check, not a check that red appears as a separate word. See official PlanMaker IF and IFERROR documentation for the composition.

For consistently structured stock codes with two hyphens, create transparent helper values:

The first hyphen is position 3; the second is 8. The substring between them starts at 4 and is 4 characters long (8-3-1). When you fill the formulas down, row 3’s middle segment is text 0052, not number 52. Avoid numeric conversion when leading zeroes are significant. The MID manual documents its start/length arguments and end-of-string behaviour.

Both FIND and SEARCH work for literal hyphens in this dataset. For strict case-sensitive codes, FIND better communicates that the letter case matters; delimiter characters themselves have no case.

Important: This is the worksheet function SEARCH(...), not PlanMaker’s Ribbon Home → Search command. The toolbar’s document-search dialog has separate search options and its wildcard documentation must not be treated as proof of wildcard behavior inside the formula function.

The ordinary ASCII example =SEARCH("red","CA-2048-RED") implies the same result in Excel because Excel’s documented SEARCH is case-insensitive and returns the starting position. Microsoft separately documents wildcard support and some Unicode handling for Excel, neither of which is established by the brief PlanMaker SEARCH reference. See Microsoft Excel SEARCH and compare it with the SoftMaker SEARCH description. Treat equivalence with Google Sheets, LibreOffice, OpenOffice and every Excel workbook compatibility mode as unverified rather than copying other programs’ behavior claims.

For one-line comparison:

If you need case-sensitive matching in your data-cleaning procedure, use FIND deliberately rather than relying on the way text happens to be capitalized.

• Verified: The English PlanMaker 2026 official reference directly documents SEARCH(SearchText, TextString [, StartPos]), the first-character default, case-insensitivity, and #VALUE! when missing. The 2026 FIND reference provides the contrasting case-sensitive rule.
• Older versions: The English 2024 SEARCH reference was directly accessed and corroborates the same syntax, case-insensitive rule and examples (2024 SEARCH). A direct 2021 function reference could not be retrieved; 2021 availability, historical edge cases and the earliest-supported release remain UNVERIFIED. An inaccessible page is not evidence a function was unsupported.
• Editional/platform differences: No native verification of desktop, NX/FreeOffice, Android or iOS behavior was available. This English manual documents syntax, not a separately verified matrix for all platforms.
• Localization: Commas and English function names follow the displayed English reference. Localized names, function separators and text comparison rules were not tested. Use PlanMaker’s Formula → Function dialog to check the target build; do not silently substitute ; in a published example without verification.
• Reference vs observation: Printed outcomes are expected results from documented core behavior and independent ASCII string calculations; not a record of executed PlanMaker formulas.

Documentation accessed: 2026-10-11; primary authority PlanMaker 2026 SEARCH and corroborating 2024 SEARCH, with FIND, MID, IF, IFERROR and formula-entry instructions. Excel comparison checked against its official current SEARCH support page.

• SoftMaker PlanMaker — function documentation
• FIND
• official IFERROR reference
• PlanMaker IF
• MID manual
• PlanMaker formula-entry guide
• 2024 SEARCH

Verification status: Official documentation checked; example outcomes were independently reasoned or arithmetically checked where applicable. Not executed in SoftMaker PlanMaker.

• No genuine SoftMaker PlanMaker screenshots are included; this guide does not use mock application images.