Measuring Text With LEN
Count the number of characters in a cell with LEN.
Why Measure Text Length?
Sometimes you need to know how many characters a value has. Maybe a product code must be exactly 8 characters, or a tweet must stay under a limit.
The LEN function counts the characters in a piece of text and returns that number. It is short for length, and it is one of the most useful helper functions in any spreadsheet.
The LEN Function
LEN takes just one thing: the text (or a cell holding text). It returns the count of characters.
LEN("Hello") returns 5 because there are five letters. The result is always a plain number you can use in other formulas.
=LEN("Hello")All lessons in this course
- Extracting Text With LEFT and RIGHT
- Pulling From the Middle With MID
- Measuring Text With LEN
- Cleaning Spaces With TRIM