Excel count words in the cell

There is one option that I always wish Excel should have, and that is counting the number of words from a cell. If you work in MS Word there is an inbuilt option on the status bar which shows you how many words are there in the sheet.

But when it comes to Excel there is no such option to count words. You can count the number of cells which have text but not actual words in them. As you know, in Excel, we have functions and you can use them to calculate almost everything. You can create a formula that can count words from a cell.

Today in this post, you will learn how to count words in Excel from a cell, a range of cells, or even the entire worksheet. And I’ll also show you how to count a specific word from a range of cells.

1. Count Words from a Single Cell

To count words from a cell you need to combine the LEN function with the SUBSTITUTE function. And the formula will be (Text is in cell A1):

=LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1," ",""))+1

When you refer to a cell using this formula, it will return 7 in the result. And yes, you have a total of 7 words in the cell.

How it Works

Before getting into this formula just think this way. In a normal sentence if you have eight words then you will definitely have 7 spaces in those words. Right?

That means you will always have one word more than the spaces. The idea is simple: If you want to count the words, count the spaces and add one to them. To understand this formula you need to split it into three parts.

In the first part, you used the LEN function to count the number of characters from cell A1. And in the second and third parts, you have combined SUBSTITUTE with LEN to remove spaces from the cell and then count the characters. At this point, you have an equation like this.

The total number of characters with spaces and the total number of characters without spaces. And when you subtract both numbers get the number of spaces and in the end, you must add one to it. It returns 7 in the result which is the total number of words in the cell.

Important: When you use the above formula it will return 1 even if the cell is blank so it’s better to wrap it with the IF function to avoid this problem.

=IF(ISBLANK(A2),0,LEN(A2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2," ",""))+1)

This formula will first check the cell and only return the word count if there is a value in the cell.

2. Using a UDF

Apart from the above formulas, I have written a small code to create a UDF for this. This code will help you to create a custom function that will simply return the word count. In short, you don’t need to combine any functions.

Function MyWordCount(rng As Range) As Integer

MyWordCount = UBound(Split(rng.Value, " "), 1) + 1

End Function

Let me tell you how to use it.

1. First of all, enter this code in VBA editor.
   
2. And then come back to your worksheet, and enter “=MyWordCount(” and refer to the cell in which you have value.

And it will return the word count.

Related: Formula Bar in Excel

3. Count Words from a Range of Cells

Now let’s come to the next level. And here you need to count words from a range of cells instead of a single cell. The good news is you just need to use the same formula (just a simple change) which you have used above. And the formula will be:

=SUMPRODUCT(LEN(A1:A11)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1:A11," ",""))+1)

In the above formula, A1:A11 is the range of cells and when you enter the formula it returns 77 in the result.

How it Works

This formula works in the same way as the first method works but is just a small advance. The only difference is you have wrapped it in SUMPRODUCT and referred to the entire range instead of a single cell.

Do you know that SUMPRODUCT can take arrays? So, when you use it, it returns an array where you have a count of words for each cell. And in the end, it sums those counts and tells you the count of words in the column.

4. Word Count from the Entire Worksheet

This code is one of the useful macro codes which I use in my work, and it can help you to count all the words from a worksheet.

Sub Word_Count_Worksheet()

Dim WordCnt As Long
Dim rng As Range
Dim S As String
Dim N As Long

For Each rng In ActiveSheet.UsedRange.Cells
S = Application.WorksheetFunction.Trim(rng.Text)
N = 0

If S <> vbNullString Then
N = Len(S) – Len(Replace(S, " ", "")) + 1
End If

WordCnt = WordCnt + N

Next rng

MsgBox "There are total " & Format(WordCnt, "#,##0") & " words in the active worksheet"

End Sub

When you run it, it will show a message box with the number of words you have in the active worksheet.

Related: What is VBA in Excel

5. Count a Specific Word/Text String from a Range

Here you have a different situation. Let’s say you need to count a specific word from a range of cells or check the number of times a value appears in a column.

Take this example: Below you have a range of four cells and from this range, you need to count the count of occurrences of the word “Monday”.

For this, the formula is:

=SUMPRODUCT((LEN(D6:D9)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(D6:D9,"Monday","")))/LEN("Monday"))

And when you enter it, it returns to the count of the word “Monday”. That’s 4.

Important: It returns the count of the word (word’s frequency) from the range not the count of the cells which have that word. Monday is there four times in three cells.

How it Works

To understand this function, again you need to split it into four parts. In the first part, the LEN function returns an array of the count of characters from the cells.

The second part returns an array of the count of characters from the cells by removing the word “Monday”.

In the third part, the LEN function returns the length of characters of wor word “Monday”.

After that, subtracts part one from part two and then divides it with part three it returns an array with the count of the word “Monday” from each cell.

In the fourth part, SUMPRODUCT returns the sum of this array and gives the count of “Monday” from the range.

Conclusion

Whenever you are typing some text in a cell or a range of cells you can these methods to keep a check on the word count. I wish someday in the future Excel will get this option to count words. But, for the time being, you have all these awesome methods.

Which method do you like the most? Make sure to share your views with me in the comment section, I’d love to hear from you. And please, don’t forget to share this post with your friends, I am sure they will appreciate it.

Excel doesn’t have a dedicated function for counting words in a cell. However, with a little ingenuity, you can create such a formula using the SUBSTITUTE and LEN functions, with help from TRIM, as shown in the example. At a high level, this formula uses the LEN function to count the number of characters in the cell, with and without spaces, then uses the difference to figure out the word count. This works, because word count is equal to the number of spaces + 1, so long as there is one space between each word.

The first part of the formula counts the characters in cell B5, after removing extra space:

=LEN(TRIM(B5)) // normalize space, count characters

Inside LEN, the TRIM function first removes any extra spaces between words, or at the beginning or end of the text. This is important, since any extra spaces will throw off the word count. In this case, there are no extra space characters, so TRIM returns the original text directly to the LEN function, which returns 30:

LEN("All Quiet on the Western Front") // returns 30

At this point, we have:

=30-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(B5," ",""))+1

Next, we use the SUBSTITUTE function to remove all space characters from the text:

SUBSTITUTE(B5," ","") // strip all space

Notice SUBSTITUTE is configured to look for a space character (» «), and replace with an empty string («»). By default, SUBSTITUTE will replace all spaces. The result is delivered directly to the LEN function, which returns the count:

LEN("AllQuietontheWesternFront") // returns 25

LEN returns 25, the number of characters remaining after all space has been removed. We can now simplify the formula to:

=30-25+1 // returns 6

which returns 6 as a final result, the number of words in cell B5.

Dealing with blank cells

The formula in the example will return 1 even if a cell is empty, or contains only space. This happens because we are adding 1 unconditionally, after counting space characters between words. To guard against this problem, you can adapt the formula as shown below:

=LEN(TRIM(B5))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(B5," ",""))+(LEN(TRIM(B5))>0)

Notice we’ve replaced 1 with this expression:

LEN(TRIM(B5))>0

This code first trims B5, then checks the length. If B5 contains text, LEN returns a positive number, and the expression returns TRUE. If B5 is empty, or contains only space, TRIM returns an empty string («») to LEN. In that case, LEN returns zero (0) and the expression returns FALSE. The trick is that TRUE and FALSE evaluate to 1 and zero, respectively, when involved in any math operation. As a result, the expression only adds 1 when there is text in B5. Otherwise, it adds zero (0). This logic could also be written with the IF function statement like this:

IF(LEN(TRIM(B5))>0,1,0)

and the result would be the same. The expression above is simply more compact.

Есть одна штука, которую я бы хотел иметь в Excel: подсчет слов в ячейке.

Если вы работаете в MS Word, в строке состояния есть встроенная опция, которая показывает, сколько слов на листе.

В Word есть опция для подсчета слов, но не в Excel. Вы можете посчитать количество ячеек, в которых есть текст, но не фактические слова в них.

В Excel в нашем распоряжении есть функции, с которыми мы можем посчитать почти все. Вы можете создать формулу, которая сможет посчитать слова в ячейке.

Четыре разных способа посчитать слова в Excel

Сегодня в этой статье вы научитесь считать слова в Excel в ячейке или диапазоне ячеек или даже во всей таблице.

Также я покажу вам, как посчитать определенное слово из диапазона ячеек. Теперь без всяких церемоний, давайте начнем.

1. Формула для подсчета слов в ячейке

Сочетание функций ДЛСТР с ПОДСТАВИТЬ

И формула будет (текст в ячейке A1):

= ДЛСТР(A1) — ДЛСТР (ПОДСТАВИТЬ (A1; » «; «»)) + 1

Когда вы ссылаетесь на ячейку, используя эту формулу, она вернет 5 в результате.

И да, у вас есть 5 слов в ячейке.

Как формула работает?

Прежде чем перейти к этой формуле, просто подумайте. В обычном предложении, если у вас восемь слов, у вас определенно будет 7 пробелов в этих словах. Правильно? Это означает, что у вас всегда будет на одно слово больше, чем пробелов.

Идея проста: если вы хотите посчитать слова, подсчитайте пробелы и добавьте единицу.

Теперь, чтобы понять эту формулу, вам нужно разделить ее на три части.

В первой части мы использовали функцию ДЛСТР (LEN) для подсчета количества символов в ячейке A1. А во второй и третьей части мы объединили ПОДСТАВИТЬ (SUBSTITUTE) с ДЛСТР (LEN), чтобы удалить пробелы из ячейки и затем подсчитать символы.

Наше уравнение выглядит так:

= 20 — 16 +1

• 20 — общее количество символов с пробелами
• 16 — символы без пробелов

Когда вы вычтете одно из другого, вы получите количество пробелов, и вам останется добавить один. В результате возвращается число 5, что является общим количеством слов в ячейке.

Когда вы используете приведенную выше формулу, она вернет 1, даже если ячейка пуста, поэтому лучше обернуть ее функцией ЕСЛИ (IF), чтобы избежать этой проблемы.

= ЕСЛИ(ЕПУСТО (A1);0; ДЛСТР(A1) — ДЛСТР(ПОДСТАВИТЬ(A1; » «; «»)) + 1)

Эта формула сначала проверяет ячейку и возвращает количество слов, только если в ячейке есть значение.

Пользовательская функция

Помимо приведенных выше формул, я напишу вам небольшой код для создания Пользовательской функции. Этот код поможет вам создать пользовательскую функцию, которая будет просто возвращать количество слов. Короче говоря, вам не нужно будет сочетать какие-либо функции.

Function MyWordCount(rng As Range) As Integer

MyWordCount = UBound(Split(rng.Value, " "), 1) + 1

End Function

Давайте я расскажу вам, как ее использовать.

• Прежде всего, введите этот код в редакторе VBA.

• Затем вернитесь на свой рабочий лист и введите «= MyWordCount(» и сошлитесь на ячейку, в которой у вас есть значение.

И она вернет количество слов.

2. Подсчет слов в диапазоне ячеек

Теперь давайте перейдем на следующий уровень. Здесь вам нужно будет посчитать слова уже в диапазоне ячеек вместо одной ячейки.

Хорошая новость! Можно использовать ту же формулу (добавив небольшое изменение), которую мы использовали выше.

Вот эта формула:

= СУММПРОИЗВ(ДЛСТР(A1:A11)-ДЛСТР(ПОДСТАВИТЬ(A1:A11; » «;»»))+1)

В приведенной выше формуле A1: A11 — это диапазон ячеек, при вводе формулы в результате получим 55.

Как это работает?

Эта формула работает так же, как и первый метод, но только чуть сложнее. Разница лишь в том, что мы завернули ее в СУММПРОИЗВ (SUMPRODUCT) и ссылаемся на весь диапазон вместо одной ячейки.

Вы помните, что СУММПРОИЗВ (SUMPRODUCT) может работать с массивами? Поэтому, когда вы используете эту функцию, она возвращает массив, в котором у вас есть количество слов для каждой ячейки. Далее она суммирует эти цифры и сообщает вам количество слов в столбце.

3. Подсчет количества слов во всей таблицы с кодом VBA

Этот код является одним из списка полезных макросов, который я использую в своей работе, и он может помочь вам подсчитать все слова на листе.

Sub Word_Count_Worksheet()

Dim WordCnt As Long

Dim rng As Range

Dim S As String

Dim N As Long

For Each rng In ActiveSheet.UsedRange.Cells

S = Application.WorksheetFunction.Trim(rng.Text)

N = 0

If S <> vbNullString Then

N = Len(S) - Len(Replace(S, " ", "")) + 1

End If

WordCnt = WordCnt + N

Next rng

MsgBox "Всего " & Format(WordCnt, "#,##0") & " слов на активном листе"

End Sub

Когда вы запустите его, он покажет окно сообщения с количеством слов, которые у вас есть в активном листе.

4. Подсчет определенного слова/текстовой строки в диапазоне

Здесь у нас другая ситуация. Допустим, нам нужно посчитать определенное слово в диапазоне ячеек или проверить, сколько раз значение появляется в столбце.

Разберем на примере.

Ниже у нас есть диапазон из четырех ячеек, и из этого диапазона нам нужно посчитать количество появлений слова «понедельник».

Вот формула для этого:

= СУММПРОИЗВ ((ДЛСТР (A1:A4) — ДЛСТР (ПОДСТАВИТЬ (A1:A4; «понедельник»; «»)) / ДЛСТР(«понедельник»))

И когда вы введете ее, она возвратит количество понедельников. Ответ — 4.

Формула возвращает количество слов (частоту слова) в диапазоне, а не количество ячеек, в которых есть это слово.

Понедельник встречается четыре раза в трех ячейках.

Как это работает?

Чтобы понять эту функцию, вам снова нужно разделить ее на четыре части.

В первой части функция ДЛСТР (LEN) возвращает массив количества символов в ячейках.

Вторая часть возвращает массив подсчета символов в ячейках, удалив слово «понедельник».

В третьей части функция ДЛСТР (LEN) возвращает длину символов слова «понедельник».

После этого вычитаем первую часть из второй, а затем делим ее на третью часть. Возвращен массив с количеством слов «понедельник» в каждой ячейке.

В четвертой части СУММПРОИЗВ (SUMPRODUCT) возвращает сумму этого массива и дает количество понедельников в диапазоне.

Заключение

Всякий раз, когда вы печатаете какой-то текст в ячейке или диапазоне ячеек, вы можете использовать эти методы для контроля количества слов.

Я мечтаю, что когда-нибудь в будущем в Excel появится эта опция. Ну а пока будем пользоваться этими замечательными методами.

Я надеюсь, что статья была полезной для вас. Какой метод вам понравился больше всех?

Не забудьте поделиться своими мнениями со мной в разделе комментариев, для меня это важно. И, пожалуйста, не забудьте поделиться со своими друзьями, я уверен, что они это оценят.

Excel is a tool for storing, organizing, and visualizing a large volume of data. It uses a rectangular block known as a cell to store the data unit. This tool can be used to perform different tasks like creating graphs, and analyzing trends, to get insights from the data. Data analysis can be performed in many ways like visual analysis using graphs, mathematical or trend analysis using formulas, etc. It is primarily used for financial data analysis by accounting professionals but can be used by everyone as it is very easy to use and saves a lot of time. Let’s see how to count the number of words in a cell or range of cells.

Count the Number of Words in a Cell or a Range Cells in Excel

1.  Firstly, we will remove any extra spaces present at the start or at the end of sentences or text data present inside the cell.
2.  Calculate the total number of characters present including the spaces present in between the words.
3.  Now, we will replace all the white spaces that are present in between words and then count the characters.
4.  Calculate the difference between the total count of characters with spaces to that without spaces (step 2 – step 3). This will give the count of the total number of white spaces.
5.  Add 1 to the difference to get the count of words.

For the purpose of demonstration, we will take one string- “Hello!, welcome to GeeksforGeeks.” and calculate the number of words present in it.

Step 1: Remove white spaces at the beginning or at the end of the string.

TRIM(): This function takes a cell with content and as a result return gives the same text without any white space at the beginning or end.

Input: ”          Hello, How are you?”

Output: Hello, How are you?

Output

Step 2: Count the number of characters with white spaces between the words.

LEN(): This function calculates the number of characters present in the cell.

Output

Step 3: Replace the spaces with no space and then calculate the number of characters.

SUBSTITUTE(): This function replaces a piece of the text with another bit of text.

Syntax: SUBSTITUTE ( cell name, old_text, new_text)

Output

We can see that the spaces are removed.

To count the characters we can add the LEN function with the substitute function line LEN(SUBSTITUTE(cell_name)).

Output

Step 4: Calculating the difference 

Output

Step 5: Add 1 to the difference value obtained

Output

The count of words in “Hello!, Welcome to GeeksforGeeks” is 4. Therefore, the formula to calculate the count of words in a cell is:

= LEN(TRIM(cell_name)) – LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2, ” “, “”) + 1

Count words in the range of cells

Formula that can be used: =SUM(LEN(TRIM(cell_range))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(cell_range,” “,””))+1)

Example: Suppose we have text in three cells and we want to calculate the total words present in those cells.

Formula

Output

I recently attended a workshop where panelists provided their best Excel tips. One tip involved filtering a range of cells containing a certain number of words. A nice tip, but it left attendees wondering how to count words in Excel. (Includes practice file.)

The summit tip was for a specific product, but opportunities exist where you might want to count words in an Excel cell. For example, I do a similar process when I pull a list of site search queries from my web analytics to see people’s interests.

Spaces Impact Word Count

The key to counting words in Excel is to correctly identify and count the spaces between and around the words. You need to remove leading and trailing spaces in the cells, or the word count will be inflated. There are a couple of ways to do this. A simple way is to use an Excel add-on such as ASAP Utilities.

Another way is to use the Excel TRIM function. The trim function removes leading and trailing spaces in a cell. In the screen snap below, you can see that the spaces aren’t always obvious. You have to compare the counts in Columns B and C

In addition to the TRIM function, I’ll also use Excel’s LEN function and SUBSTITUTE functions. These are also considered TEXT functions.

LEN function returns the number of characters in a string. In my case, the number will reflect the number for each reference cell. Since a “space” is considered a character, it is counted.

SUBSTITUTE function is similar to “search and replace” on a cell, except we can specify how many times the substitution should occur. For example, you could indicate once, all, or a specific number. 

For example, the formula =SUBSTITUTE(A1,”firefox”,”google”) would replace the word “firefox” with “google” for cell reference A1.

For our purposes, we want to substitute a space “ “ with nothing “”. Effectively, the function removes all spaces, so the words run together. “Example text” would change to “Exampletext”. All the single spaces have been removed resulting in a string without spaces.

Understanding the Word Count Formula

One nice feature of Excel is that you can nest formulas that include multiple functions. The formula below references LEN, TRIM, and SUBSTITUTE. It also starts with the IF function, which we’ve outlined before.

To get the word count in cell A2 in my spreadsheet, I would use this formula in B2,

=IF(LEN(TRIM(A2))=0,0,LEN(TRIM(A2))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2,” “,””))+1)

While stringing Excel functions together is efficient, it may make the formula intimidating. You’ll note in the screen snap below and on the lesson spreadsheet, I’ve added more columns to make this clearer.

Let me break this down for you.

1. We TRIM any extra spaces in cell A2 and determine if the cell is blank by using =IF(LEN(TRIM(A2))=0,0. If A2 is blank, it assigns the word count as 0.
2. If A2 isn’t blank, we count the characters in the cell using LEN(TRIM(A2)). You might think of this as our starting character count inclusive of spaces.
3. We use LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2)," ","") to remove the remaining spaces. We then count the characters in this new string.
4. We take the LEN count from Step 2 and subtract the LEN count from Step 3. We then add 1 to the count to adjust for the first word.

In the above example, I placed the formula in Column B. However, you can also add more columns to show various stages. This often helps when learning a nested formula. In the screen snap below, my formula is in Column F.

Presenting Another Way

If you prefer word problems, think of it this way. If the cell is empty, make the word count = 0. Otherwise, remove the extra spaces and count the characters in the cell. Hold that value as “A.” Now, remove all spaces in that cell and count the characters again. Hold that value as “B.” Your word count is (A-B) + 1.

“Sample example text” = LEN count of 19. This is your “A.”

“Sampleexampletext” = LEN count of 17. This is your “B.”

(19-17)+1 = word count of 3.

After writing this formula, I think I have a new appreciation for the ease at which some programs, like Microsoft Word, can return a word count.

Consider a Custom Function

After using this word count formula several times, I thought it would make more sense to create a custom function and assign it to the Excel workbook. This would save me from repeating these steps each time I needed to do an analysis.

You can use the code snippet below and add it as a module in the VB editor. In my example, I called the function CellWordCount. That name is one I’m apt to remember, but you can choose a different name for your custom function.

Function CellWordCount(rng As Range) As Integer
    CellWordCount = UBound(Split(Application.WorksheetFunction.Trim(rng.Value), " "), 1) + 1
End Function

To use the function, click in an empty cell and  type =CellWordCount and then your cell reference in parentheses.

Feel free to download the practice file and play around with it. Try editing some of the examples to include things like typos with consecutive extra space characters in between words. The sample workbook contains the formulas referenced here except for the custom function. Also, Microsoft has a page on how to create custom functions.

Now that we have had Excel count words, we can filter that column for a minimum or maximum value. Another option might be to convert the spreadsheet into a table and then add an Excel slicer.

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