Hallo Thank you for your message. Having trawled around forI tried it, although it seemed strange, as the option already ticked was 'Enable wildcards in formulae' which seemed far more appropriate. Anyway neither of them works.

Hallo
Thank you for your message. Having trawled around for a while, I had found exactly what you say. I tried it, although it seemed strange, as the option already ticked was ‘Enable wildcards in formulae’ which seemed far more appropriate. Anyway neither of them works.

A simple example of what I am trying to do is:

IF(L38=".ABC.",“YES”,“NO”) and if L38 = ABCXYZ or XYZABC, the response is always NO, whether I have the .* at either or both ends.

If I replace the .ABC. with ABCXYZ and put L38 = ABCXYZ, the response is YES.

Regards, John

P.S. Your Reply-To address does not work. Hardly surprising since it says ‘noreply@…’.

Why do I have to write my request twice here? And what is the purpose of it being repeated yet again in the preview?
OK. Now I discover there is a limit to the initial question length. How about making this clear, and including a character count?

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Ask/Getting_Started

Pay attention to " How do I add to/clarify the question?"

Confusing continuation of My version: 6.0.4.2 (x64) libreoffice calc does not recognise .* as a wildcard. How can I enable this?

See edited answer there.