Search number in string, distinguish number of digits

Question

The user enters a formula as a string in cell B1 using some of the variables in cells A1:A16. I want to create a conditional formatting rule to highlight the variables used.

I used this which works fine for c1 to c9. As you can see in the picture, it doesn't work for c16 because it highlights both c1 and c16.

=ISNUMBER(SEARCH(A1,$B$1))

Answer 1

As commented above, the formula given in the first comment will not work with Conditional Formatting, since reference operators can't be used within Conditional Formatting. Hence create a range of those operators and use the formula in Conditional Formatting.

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• Formula used in conditional formatting:

=XMATCH(A1:A16,TEXTSPLIT($B$1,$F$2:$F$11))

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Where F2:F11

Operators
#
$
(
)
*
+
-
/
=
@

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Here is another example.

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