How to Identify One Word in a Cell in Excel. Text in a cell in Excel is called a text string. Excel provides a number of built-in functions enabling you to select and manipulate text strings in cells.

To use COUNTIF: Select the cell in which you'd like to display your COUNTIF output. Type in the =COUNTIF function. Within a ...

For example, entering "=TRIM(A1)" without quotes will strip all but single spaces between words from the string " this is a test " in cell A1, leaving "this is a test".