Since Excel first came out, I've been using a certain feature because it speeds up searches which I constantly use in my Excel spreadsheets because of the type of data I enter in them. To access the feature, do the following in an open spreadsheet:

1) Press Shift-F5 to open the Find and Replace dialog box.
2) Type in part or all of the text you are searching for.
3) Click on the Options button.
4) Click on the down arrow in the Search box and select By Columns.
5) Click on the down arrow in the Look In box and select Values.

Unfortunetly, I have to do this EVERY TIME I open Excel because the developers have failed to allow the selections I make to become the default for this dialog box. I haven't tried the 2013 version yet but I bet it's still the same as version 1 of Excel ... no option to set your desired default.