Count string in excel

Watch Video – How to Count Cells that Contain Text Strings

Counting is one of the most common tasks people do in Excel. It’s one of the metric that is often used to summarize the data. For example, count sales done by Bob, or sales more than 500K or quantity of Product X sold.

Excel has a variety of count functions, and in most cases, these inbuilt Excel functions would suffice. Below are the count functions in Excel:

• COUNT – To count the number of cells that have numbers in it.
• COUNTA – To count the number of cells that are not empty.
• COUNTBLANK – To count blank cell.
• COUNTIF/COUNTIFS – To count cells when the specified criteria are met.

There may sometimes be situations where you need to create a combination of functions to get the counting done in Excel.

One such case is to count cells that contain text strings.

Count Cells that Contain Text in Excel

Text values can come in many forms. It could be:

• Text String
  • Text Strings or Alphanumeric characters. Example – Trump Excel or Trump Excel 123.
• Empty String
  • A cell that looks blank but contains =”” or ‘ (if you just type an apostrophe in a cell, it looks blank).
• Logical Values
  • Example – TRUE and FALSE.
• Special characters
  • Example – @, !, $ %.

Have a look at the data set shown below:

It has all the combinations of text, numbers, blank, special characters, and logical values.

To count cells that contain text values, we will use the wildcard characters:

• Asterisk (*): An asterisk represents any number of characters in excel. For example, ex* could mean excel, excels, example, expert, etc.
• Question Mark (?): A question mark represents one single character. For example, Tr?mp could mean Trump or Tramp.
• Tilde (~): To identify wildcard characters in a string.

See Also: Examples of using Wildcard Characters in Excel.

Now let’s create formulas to count different combinations.

Count Cells that Contain Text in Excel (including Blanks)

Here is the formula:

=COUNTIF(A1:A11,”*”)

This formula uses COUNTIF function with a wildcard character in the criteria. Since asterisk (*) represents any number of characters, it counts all the cells that have text characters in it.

It even counts cells that have an empty string in it (an empty string can be a result of formula returning =”” or a cell that contains an apostrophe). While a cell with empty string looks blank, it is counted by this formula.

Logical Values are not counted.

Count Cells that Contain Text in Excel (excluding Blanks)

Here is the formula:

=COUNTIF(A1:A11,”?*”)

In this formula, the criteria argument is made up of a combination of two wildcard characters (question mark and asterisk). This means that there should, at least, be one character in the cell.

This formula does not count cells that contain an empty string (an apostrophe or =””). Since an empty string has no character in it, it fails the criteria and is not counted.

Logical Values are also not counted.

Count Cells that Contain Text (excluding Blanks, including Logical Values)

Here is the formula:

=COUNTIF(A1:A11,”?*”) + SUMPRODUCT(–(ISLOGICAL(A1:A11))

The first part of the formula uses a combination of wildcard characters (* and ?). This returns the number of cells that have at least one text character in it (counts text and special characters, but does not count cells with empty strings).

The second part of the formula checks for logical values. Excel ISLOGICAL function returns TRUE if there is a logical value and FALSE if there isn’t. A double negative sign ensures that TRUEs are converted into 1 and FALSEs into 0. Excel SUMPRODUCT function then simply returns the number of cells that have a logical value in it.

These above examples demonstrate how to use a combination of formulas and wildcard characters to count cells. In a similar fashion, you can also construct formulas to find the SUM or AVERAGE of a range of cells based on the data type in it.

You May Also Like the Following Excel Tutorials:

• Count the Number of Words in a Text String.
• Using Multiple Criteria in Excel COUNTIF and COUNTIFS Function.
• How to Count Colored Cells in Excel.
• Count Characters in a Cell (or Range of Cells) Using Formulas in Excel

If you want to learn how to count text in Excel, you need to use function COUNTIF with the criteria defined using wildcard *, with the formula: =COUNTIF(range;”*”) . Range is defined cell range where you want to count the text in Excel and wildcard * is criteria for all text occurrences in the defined range.

How do I count multiple strings in Excel?

The formula takes into account if a text string exists multiple times in a single cell, see picture above.
How to enter an array formula

1. Select cell E4.
2. Press with left mouse button on in the formula bar.
3. Press and hold CTRL + SHIFT simultaneously.
4. Press Enter once.
5. Release all keys.

How do I count the number of words in a string in Excel?

Select a blank cell in your worksheet, enter formula “=intwordcount(A2)” into the Formula Bar, and then press the Enter key to get the result. See screenshot: Note: In the formula, A2 is the cell you will count number of words inside.

How do I count the number of strings in a cell?

When you need to count the characters in cells, use the LEN function—which counts letters, numbers, characters, and all spaces.

Can you Countif 2 conditions?

You can use the COUNTIFS function in Excel to count cells in a single range with a single condition as well as in multiple ranges with multiple conditions. If the latter, only those cells that meet all of the specified conditions are counted.

How do I use Countif between two numbers?

Count cell numbers between two numbers with CountIf function

1. Select a blank cell which you want to put the counting result.
2. For counting cell numbers >=75 and <= 90, please use this formula =COUNTIFS(B2:B8,»>=75″, B2:B8,”<=90″).

How do I count specific text in a column in Excel?

To count the cells that contain text within your spreadsheet on a Windows computer, do the following:

1. Click on an “empty cell” on your spreadsheet to insert the formula.
2. Type or paste the function “ =COUNTIF (range, criteria) ” without quotes to count the number of cells containing text within a specific cell range.

How do I count words in a spreadsheet?

Pro Tip: You can also use Google Docs to quickly get the word count. Just copy and paste the text in any blank Google Docs document and use the keyboard shortcut Control + Shift + C (press all together) to get the word and character count.

How do I count rows in Excel?

If you need a quick way to count rows that contain data, select all the cells in the first column of that data (it may not be column A). Just click the column header. The status bar, in the lower-right corner of your Excel window, will tell you the row count.

How do I count alphabets in Excel spreadsheet?

If only count the length of all characters in a cell, you can select a blank cell, and type this formula =LEN(A1) (A1 stands the cell you want to count letters, you can change it as you need), then press Enter button on the keyboard, the length of the letters in the cell has been counted.

How do I count two criteria in Excel?

If you want to count based on multiple criteria, use COUNTIFS function. range – the range of cells which you want to count. criteria – the criteria that must be evaluated against the range of cells for a cell to be counted.

How do you write a Countif criteria?

A number, expression, cell reference, or text string that determines which cells will be counted. For example, you can use a number like 32, a comparison like “>32”, a cell like B4, or a word like “apples”. COUNTIF uses only a single criteria. Use COUNTIFS if you want to use multiple criteria.

How do I count partial text in Excel?

Select a blank cell you will place the counting result at, type the formula =COUNTIF(A1:A16,”*Anne*”) (A1:A16 is the range you will count cells, and Anne is the certain partial string) into it, and press the Enter key. And then it counts out the total number of cells containing the partial string.

How do I count specific items in Excel?

On the Formulas tab, click More Functions, point to Statistical, and then click one of the following functions:

1. COUNTA: To count cells that are not empty.
2. COUNT: To count cells that contain numbers.
3. COUNTBLANK: To count cells that are blank.
4. COUNTIF: To count cells that meets a specified criteria.

What is count A in Excel?

The Excel COUNTA function returns the count of cells that contain numbers, text, logical values, error values, and empty text (“”). COUNTA does not count empty cells.

Is there a word count in Excel?

Excel does not have a proper word count tool or formula, but there is one thing we can count, and that is characters, as we’ve learned above. Specifically, we are going to count the number of spaces inside the string. And from that, we are going to derive the number of words just adding 1 to the number of spaces.

How do I count lines in Excel after filter?

After you filter the rows in a list, you can use functions to count only the visible rows.

1. For a simple count of visible numbers or all visible data, use the SUBTOTAL function.
2. To count visible data, and ignore errors, use the AGGREGATE function.
3. To count specific items in a filtered List, use a SUMPRODUCT formula.

How do you count knitting rows?

To count the number of rows in your knitting, count the stitches (the V’s) vertically, including the loop over the needle. I’ve only highlighted five rows, but if you wanted to count the total number of rows you have worked, continue counting vertically down the column of stitches.

How do I count characters in a spreadsheet?

Count Characters in a Cell in Google Sheets

1. Below is the formula that will count the number of characters in each cell: =LEN(B2)
2. Note that the LEN function counts every character – be it an alphabet, number, special character, punctuation marks, or space characters.

I am trying to count the number of times a sub-string appears within a column of string data in Excel. Please see the below example.

The column of string data (tweets) looks like this:

   A
1  An example string with @username in it
2  RT @AwesomeUser says @username is awesome

The column with «substrings» (Twitter screen names) looks like this:

   B
1  username
2  AwesomeUser

I want to use a formula to count the number of times that a substring from B1, B2, etc. appears in the strings in column A. For example: a formula searching for B1 would return «2» and a search for B2 would return «1».

I can’t do it this way:

=COUNTIF(A:A, "username")

because COUNTIF only looks for strings, not substrings. This formula would always return «0».

Here’s a formula I thought might do it:

=SUMPRODUCT((LEN(A:A)-(LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A:A,"username",""))))/LEN("username"))

Unfortunately, I have 16,000 entries in column B and tens of thousands in A, so counting characters won’t work even on a high power PC (also, the result returned by the function is suspect).

I thought about using:

=COUNTIF(A:A, "*username*")

but COUNTIF requires a string with the star operators; I need to use cell references due to the volume of data.

My question: does anyone know how I can use a formula for this? If using COUNTIF, how do I get a cell reference in the conditional part of the statement (or use a function to substitute the string in the cell referenced within the conditional part of a COUNTIF statement)?

I know that I could parse the data, but I would like to know how to do it in Excel.