How to search for ? (question mark) in Excel

When I try to find the question mark character (?) in an Excel sheet, Excel cannot locate the cells containing them. How can I search for ? in Excel?

To search for the cells containing the question mark character (?), use a tilde before it inside the search box:

~?

Now Excel will show you only the cells that contain the question mark character (?).

The ? is a wildcard which represents a single character, and the * is a wildcard character that represents any string of characters.

When searching for either wildcard character, Excel will simply find everything, whether or not these actual characters appear in the cells you're searching.

To find either of the specific characters, when not using them in a wildcard search, you must precede it in your search criteria with a tilde, the ~ character.

• ~? finds only the ? character
• ~* finds only the * character
• ? finds all single characters
• * finds all strings of characters