Wildcard searching in PowerPivot

I've previously discussed how Excel's PowerPivot add-in can be used to deal with greater amounts of data than Excel can usually process. Here's a brief tip on how to use DAX (data analysis expression)s formulas in PowerPivot to run wildcard searches in a specified column.

We simply use the SEARCH command nested in a IFERROR statement to see when a string appears in a column of a table that is listed in brackets. In this example, you can see that we can use an asterisk for a multiple characters and a question mark for a single character.

When the string is found a '1' is entered in the column in which the DAX formula is entered. The greater processing power of PowerPivot is very obvious when you see that after entering the formula in the first cell of a column it is automatically entered for the full column.