Getting the length of text with Excel’s LEN Formula

What does it do?

Gives you the number of characters of the text

Formula breakdown:

=LEN(text)

What it means:

=LEN(text that you want to get the number of characters)

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There are times when you need to get the number of characters within a cell in Excel.  Thankfully this is very easy to do with Excel’s LEN (Length) formula!

You can use the LEN function in Excel to count all characters in a cell, including letters, numbers, special characters, and all spaces.

The LEN function can be used as a data cleansing technique to find leading or trailing spaces or can be nested with other TEXT functions.

I explain how you can do this below:

STEP 1: We need to enter the LEN function next to the cell that we want to get the number of characters from:

=LEN(

 

STEP 2: The LEN arguments:

text

Which text do we want to get the number of characters from?

Reference the cell that contains the text string:

=LEN(C9)

 

STEP 3: Do the same for the rest of the cells by dragging the LEN formula all the way down using the left mouse button.

Note that you are able to get the number of characters for each name. My name has 16 characters!