Explanation

The SEARCH function returns the position of the text you are looking for as a number (if it exists). Conditional formatting automatically treats any positive number as TRUE, so the rule is triggered whenever SEARCH returns a number. When SEARCH doesn’t find the text you’re looking for, it returns a #VALUE error, which conditional formatting treats as FALSE.

Using the ampersand (&) we are concatenating all values in each row together and then searching the result with SEARCH. All addresses are entered in “mixed” format, with the columns locked and the rows left relative. Effectively, this means that all 4 cells in each row are tested with exactly the same formula.

Using other cells as inputs

Note that you don’t have to hard-code any values that might change into the rule. Instead, you can use another cell as an “input” cell so you can easily change it later. For example, in this case, you could name cell E2 “input” and rewrite the formula like so:

=SEARCH(input,$B4&$C4&$D4&$E4)

You can then put any text value in E2, and the conditional formatting rule will respond instantly, highlighting rows that contain that text. See the video link below for a more detailed description.

Case sensitive option

If you need a case-sensitive option, you can use the FIND function instead of SEARCH like so:

=FIND(input,$B4&$C4&$D4&$E4)

The FIND function works just like SEARCH but matches the case as well.

Explanation

Conditional formatting is applied to all cells in the active selection at the time a rule is created.

In this case, the column references are locked to prevent columns from changing as the formula is evaluated, but the row references are relative so that row numbers are free to change. The result is a formula that applies exactly the same logic to every cell in the same row.

If COUNTBLANK finds any blank cells in a given row, it returns a positive number, which Excel evaluates to TRUE, triggering the rule.

If COUNTBLANK finds no blank cells, it returns zero, which is evaluated as FALSE, and the formatting is not triggered.