title: Excel conditional formatting - multiple "begins with" statements
body: <p>I have workbooks that have cells with lots of conditional formatting applied. The problem is that the workbooks must be saved in in 1997-2003 Excel format, .xls instead of the modern .xlsx format. If they're saved with the .xls extension, only 5 conditional formats can be saved per cell.</p>
  
  <p>Because of that, I can't use the built-in "Cell Value begins with" conditional formats; I'm going to need to use formulas instead.</p>
  
  <p>How would I construct a formula to format cells that began with multiple characters? For example, I need a formula to check to see if cell K2 begins with A, B, M, or D. I tried using this formula, but it didn't work:</p>
  
  <pre><code> =OR(SEARCH("A",$K2)=1,SEARCH("B",$K2)=1,SEARCH("M",$K2)=1,SEARCH("D",$K2)=1)
  </code></pre>