When working with imported content or data from external sources, you often need to filter out junk rows that don’t contain text and keep only those that do.
The simplest way to perform such a filter is to display a Boolean value (TRUE or FALSE) next to each cell — does it contain real text or not?
Find Text Using a Formula
Excel includes a built-in function called ISTEXT, but it's not always reliable for this use case. It simply checks the formatting of the cell — so even if a cell contains just a space, a number formatted as text, or a punctuation mark, ISTEXT will still return TRUE. If that works for your case, you’re good to go. But most users asking how to detect text in a cell are really looking for actual letters — not formatting.
So, before asking how to detect text, define what you consider to be “text.”
Some users consider only alphabetic characters (letters) to be real text.
If that sounds like you, the following formula will help. It uses the NOT and EXACT functions, with help from LOWER and UPPER, to check for the presence of letters:
=NOT(EXACT(LOWER(A1), UPPER(A1)))
| A | B | C | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Value | ISTEXT | Has letters? |
| 2 | Hello | TRUE=ISTEXT(A2) | TRUE=NOT(EXACT(LOWER(A2),UPPER(A2))) |
| 3 | 12345 (text) | TRUE=ISTEXT(A3) | FALSE=NOT(EXACT(LOWER(A3),UPPER(A3))) |
| 4 | --- | TRUE=ISTEXT(A4) | FALSE=NOT(EXACT(LOWER(A4),UPPER(A4))) |
| 5 | Café 24/7 | TRUE=ISTEXT(A5) | TRUE=NOT(EXACT(LOWER(A5),UPPER(A5))) |
| 6 | 2026-10-22 | TRUE=ISTEXT(A6) | FALSE=NOT(EXACT(LOWER(A6),UPPER(A6))) |
| 7 | № 5 | TRUE=ISTEXT(A7) | FALSE=NOT(EXACT(LOWER(A7),UPPER(A7))) |
All six values are stored as text, so ISTEXT is TRUE for each. The letter check is TRUE only where the text changes between LOWER and UPPER — real letters in any alphabet.
The logic is simple: if the cell content remains the same after converting to both lowercase and uppercase, it likely contains no letters — since LOWER and UPPER only affect letters.
Find letters and digits in a cell
Other users may consider digits (0–9) to be part of text content as well. Such a set of symbols (letters plus digits) is usually referred to as Alphanumeric letters. Read the article on how to find alphanumeric characters.
In !SEMTools, these checks are in FIND → Characters → By type → Return TRUE (faster): Alphanumeric, Latin and Numbers. Select the cells, click the check you need, and every cell turns into TRUE or FALSE.
Find Specific Text Characters
If you want to detect specific types of characters — for example, only Latin, or only digits — use one of the following dedicated tools:
- Find Latin characters
- Find digits
For more advanced needs, try the "Find cells by regular expression" tool in the same section.
See also:
- Remove Latin characters from Excel
- Remove digits from Excel text
- Extract Latin characters in Excel
- Extract numbers from text in Excel
Need to find text-containing cells in Excel?
!SEMTools helps you do it in just a few clicks!