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Google Sheets: Filter for Cells that Do Not Contain Text

by Erma Khan

You can use the following syntax to filter for cells that do not contain certain text in Google Sheets:

=FILTER(A1:C17, REGEXMATCH(A1:A17, "East")=FALSE)

This formula filters the cells in the range A1:C17 to only return the rows where cells in the range A1:A17 do not contain the word “East”.

You can also use the following syntax to filter for cells that do not contain one of several values in Google Sheets:

=FILTER(A1:C17, REGEXMATCH(A1:A17, "East|West")=FALSE)

This formula filters the cells in the range A1:C17 to only return the rows where cells in the range A1:A17 do not contain the word “East” or “West”.

The following examples show how to use this syntax in practice.

Example 1: Filter for Cells that Do Not Contain Text

Suppose we have the following data in Google Sheets:

We can use the following formula to filter for rows where the Region does not contain “East”:

=FILTER(A1:C17, REGEXMATCH(A1:A17, "East")=FALSE)

The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:

Google Sheets does not contain

Notice that only the rows where the Region does not contain “East” are returned.

Example 2: Filter for Cells that Do Not Contain One of Multiple Texts

Once again suppose we have the following data in Google Sheets:

We can use the following formula to filter for rows where the Region is not equal to “East” or “West”:

=FILTER(A1:C17, REGEXMATCH(A1:A17, "East|West")=FALSE)

The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:

Google Sheets does not contain multiple

Notice that only the rows where the Region is not equal to “East” or “West” are returned.

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common operations in Google Sheets:

How to Sum Filtered Rows in Google Sheets
How to Filter Multiple Columns in Google Sheets
How to Use SUMIF with Multiple Columns in Google Sheets

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