yogi_Conditionally Format (Highlight Duplicate Entries In Column A While Ignoring * Character In The Entry

Google Spreadsheet   Post  #2231

Yogi Anand, D.Eng, P.E.      ANAND Enterprises LLC -- Rochester Hills MI     Aug-27-2017
question by: Paulo Miguel

https://productforums.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!msg/docs/6bODIHZwWbg/syOPinS7CAAJ

Issue with asterisks and conditional formatting

I have the following in column A:

12345

12345*

1234567*890

And the following in conditional formatting:

=countif(A:A,A:A)>1

The issue is that 12345* gets marked when it obviously shouldn't be. After a bit of testing I found out it was the asterisk likely messing up with the formula, since 12345* does match with 1234567*890 if wildcards were active (which they are), just like 1234567*890 would be marked if something like 1234567XXXXX890 was in the column.

So my question is if there's any way to either disable wildcards for this formula or if there's any way around this issue.

Any help would be appreciated.