Could you provide a little more context/detail on what situation/problem you are trying to solve using a wildcard, and the equivalent Excel expression?

Hi there,

Thanks for getting back to me. What I mean is the following example:

I have 3 fields called 'Behavioural: Conversion', 'Behavioural: Buzz' & 'Competitive:Spend'.

I am trying to create a formula which populates a new field where the metric starts with 'Behavioural'. Therefore I am trying to do an IF statement update where the metric is 'Behavioural*' and where the star is any number of characters following the word behavioural.

The star (*) is the any number of characters wildcard in excel.

Thanks

Can you give an example of the full formula you would expect to use in Excel, please?

In Excel, if cell a1 starts with Beh then populate otherwise leave blank:

=if(A1="Beh*",A1,"")

Omniscope version (identical and offers no errors):

IF([Metrics]="Beh*", [Metrics],"")

As far as I'm aware, you can't do this in Excel. IF does not support wildcards. Some functions do (like COUNTIF), but in any case, Omniscope does not support these.

You can achieve the desired effect using SEARCH as the first clause of your IF statement:
http://www.visokio.com/functions-guide#SEARCH

E.g. IF( SEARCH("Beh*", [Metrics], 1)=1, [Metrics], "" )

The easiest way to achieve the desired result here is to use the LEFT function to compare then leftmost n characters with a desired string (in this case, "Beh") i.e.

IF(LEFT([Metrics],3)="Beh",[Metrics],"")

Should do the job nicely.