10 Nov
If you need character counting in Excel, then you have to make an effort to get it. Excel does not have a built-in character count tool like MS Word, so you have to use formulas to get character count statistics in your document. But don’t worry! We have a secret Excel character count weapon.
In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to count characters in your file with Excel tools. I’ll also show alternative methods for those cases when you have many files (or at least more than one) and don’t have time for sophisticated character count manipulations.
Count characters in a cell.
To count characters in a cell, you need the LEN function. Enter =LEN(cell number) in the formula bar and press Enter. If you want to apply the formula to multiple cells, you need to pull down the formula cell’s edge to be copied to the cells below.
To get the total character count in multiple cells, you need to use the SUM functions along with LEN. The formula would be as follows: =SUM((LEN( cell1 ),LEN( cell2 ),(LEN( cell3 )) )).
Unfortunately, this is very inconvenient, and you can hardly use it for translation files. Therefore we come to the next method.
NB! Please note that the Excel LEN function counts all cell characters together, including letters, numbers, punctuation marks, special symbols, and all spaces.
Count characters in the whole Excel worksheet
If you are looking for the character count statistics in a whole worksheet, there are no direct ways to get.
You can view workbook statistics by clicking the Review> Proofing> Workbook Statistics. There you’ll find data on the end of the current sheet, cells with data, tables, pivot tables, and formulas for the current sheet. You can also find statistics for your workbook.
What can you do? One way is to click Ctrl + A to highlight all the data, copy it, and paste in Word. How to do character count in Word you can find in our posts:
- How can you find a word count in Microsoft Word 2016?
- Where to find word count in Microsoft Word 365?
The other way is to use a character counter, which can do a character count for you.
Use the smart character counter for Excel character count
I bet you are a busy person and don’t have time to waste with Excel cells and formulas. We are here to help you with the Excel character count. All you need is the AnyCount word counter.
To count characters, you only need to open the program, drag and drop as many files as you like and click on the “Count” button. In a few seconds, you will see the counting results. Try AnyCount free here.
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