Excel VBA - autofilter by text

I need to figure out, how to filter by one particular name. I have two names tichava and tichaval. I want to filter out just the tichava one, problem is, that in some cases both names are in the same column, like this

see the yellow parts. I am counting number of visible rows after the filtering is done. Problem is, that if I filter by tichava I also get tichaval if I do just equal to tichava, only the ones that are simply tichava are shown, which is wrong. What should I do? Do I need to create an Array("tichava", ", tichava", "tichava,") and filter it like this? Is there no other option?

As you tagged the question VBA, I assume that a small VBA function is okay.

Now defining the filter in VBA has exactly the possibilities that you have when using auto filter in Excel itself - select one or more values you want to select or use advanced filters to define one or two "wildcard" (but not more that two) filters, eg contains or starts with. I don't see a way to specify an advanced filter for your exact needs.

First define a simple function

Public Function containsName(haystack As String, needle As String) As Boolean
    Dim words() As String, i As Long
    words = Split(Replace(haystack, " ", ""), ",")
    For i = 0 To UBound(words)
        If words(i) = needle Then
            containsName = True
            Exit Function
        End If
    Next i
End Function

Now this function will return True if the string contains exactly the name you are looking for. With this, you have two possibilities:

Either you use a helper column in Excel, use the function as UDF in a formula, eg =containsName(T2, "tichava") and filter your data by this column.

Or, if a helper column is not an option, loop over all data and create an array of all cells that you want to include and use that array as filter.