Alphanumeric characters—letters and numbers—are common building blocks of real-world data: names, IDs, order numbers, emails, and more. If you need to identify whether a cell contains any alphanumeric characters, Excel doesn’t offer a built-in function specifically for that, but there are workarounds using formulas.
This article covers several ways to detect alphanumeric content in a cell using native Excel functions. These methods can help you:
- Filter out empty cells or symbols-only cells
- Identify entries that include at least one letter or digit
- Pre-clean data before applying validations or exports
What Are Alphanumeric Characters?
The term “alphanumeric” generally refers to:
- Letters (A–Z, a–z)
- Digits (0–9)
Formula 1 (only latin characters and digits)
You can check if a cell contains at least one letter or digit using the combination of FIND, CHAR, ROW, and COUNT in an array formula:
=COUNT(FIND(CHAR(ROW(65:90));A1))+COUNT(FIND(CHAR(ROW(97:122));A1))+COUNT(FIND(CHAR(ROW(48:57));A1))>0
Since SEARCH is case-insensitive, we can use it to make formula more compact:
COUNT(SEARCH(CHAR(ROW(65:90));A1))+COUNT(SEARCH(CHAR(ROW(48:57));A1))>0
Both will return TRUE if the cell A1 contains any letter (uppercase or lowercase) or number.
Note: If you’re using Excel 365 or Excel 2021, this formula works by default. In older versions, you’ll need to confirm it as an array formula: select the formula cell, then press Ctrl + Shift + Enter.
Alphanumeric characters including accented (diacritic) chars
Are accented characters alphanumeric?
Technically speaking, no, they are not. But they are still letters, and if you define alphanumeric as “letter or digit”, then you might want to detect them too.
This formula returns TRUE if the cell contains at least one letter or at least one digit:
=OR(NOT(EXACT(LOWER(A1),UPPER(A1))),COUNT(SEARCH({0:1:2:3:4:5:6:7:8:9},A1))>0) Understanding the logic
- UPPER and LOWER only affect letters — they don’t change digits or punctuation.
- So, if the lowercase version of the text is different from the uppercase version, it means the cell has at least one letter.
- To check for digits, we try searching for the numbers 0 through 9 inside the text.
Need to detect only letters or only numbers?
Use the same logic, but skip one part:
Only letters:
=NOT(EXACT(LOWER(A1),UPPER(A1))) Only digits:
=COUNT(SEARCH({0:1:2:3:4:5:6:7:8:9},A1))>0 Alphanumeric characters include:
- Uppercase letters: A–Z
- Lowercase letters: a–z
- Digits: 0–9
This excludes punctuation, symbols (like %, $, #), whitespace, and other special characters.
Alternative: Regular Expressions
Excel doesn’t support regular expressions out of the box. But if you are using a tool like !SEMTools, you can use the following pattern in the Find cells by Regex tool:
[A-Za-z0-9]or use REGEXMATCH function:
=REGEXMATCH(A1, "[A-Za-z0-9]") This expression matches any cell that contains at least one alphanumeric character.
Limitations of regular expression search
- It only works with English alphabet (A–Z, a–z). It won’t detect accented characters or non-Latin letters.
- It’s slightly slow on large datasets, especially if used over thousands of cells.
- Formula can’t easily extract or modify the content—it only tells you whether the cell matches.
If you frequently perform this task, consider using an add-in like !SEMTools which automates the detection with a single click, supports multiple alphabets, and lets you filter or mark matching cells instantly.
Find alphanumeric chars with !SEMTools add-in
Instead of building complex formulas or writing scripts, the !SEMTools add-in offers a simple, fast solution.
The procedure is built into !SEMTools and is located in the following menu:
- Find → Characters → By Type
From there, simply select the “Alphanumeric” option from the list.
How It works:
- Select the range of cells you want to check.
- Go to the !SEMTools ribbon tab.
- Choose Find → Characters → By Type.
- Pick Alphanumeric from the dropdown menu.
The add-in will scan your selection and output a Boolean result:
- TRUE if the cell contains any alphanumeric characters.
- FALSE if it does not.
This allows you to quickly filter, sort, or highlight cells based on the presence of letters and numbers—without affecting punctuation, symbols, or whitespace.
This post is also available in RU.