Skip to content
Free Excel Tutorials
  • Home
  • Excel For Beginners
  • Excel Intermediate
  • Advanced Excel For Experts

Data Analysis

  • Filter Data Based on Date in Excel
  • How to combine 2 or more chart types in a single chart in Excel
  • Conditional Formatting Icon Sets Examples in Excel
  • How To Create Frequency Distribution in Excel
  • Randomize/ Shuffle List in Excel

References

  • How to get last column number in range in Excel
  • How to use Excel ROW Function
  • Basic INDEX MATCH approximate in Excel
  • Extract data with helper column in Excel
  • How to use Excel INDIRECT Function

Data Validations

  • How To Create Drop-down List in Excel
  • Excel Data validation date in next 30 days
  • Excel Data validation no punctuation
  • Excel Data validation exists in list
  • Excel Data validation must not contain

How to get last row in text data in Excel

by

To get the last relative position (i.e. last row, last column) for text data (with or without empty cells), you can use the MATCH function. See example below:

Formula

=MATCH(bigtext,range)

Explanation

In the example shown, the formula in E5 is:

=MATCH(REPT("z",255),B4:B11)

How this formula works

This formula uses the MATCH function in approximate match mode to locate the last text value in a range. Approximate match enabled by setting by the 3rd argument in MATCH to 1, or omitting this argument, which defaults to 1.

The lookup value is a so-called “big text” (sometimes abbreviated “bigtext”) which is intentionally a value “bigger” than any value that will appear in the range. When working with text, which sorts alphabetically, this means a text value that will always appear at the end of the alphabetic sort order.

Since this formula matches text, the idea is to construct a lookup value that will never occur in actual text, but will aways be last. To do that, we use the REPT function to repeat the letter “z” 255 times. The number 255 represents the largest number of characters that MATCH allows in a lookup value.

When MATCH can’t find this value, it will “step back” to the last text value in the range, and return the position of that value.

Note: this approach works fine with empty cells in the range, but is not reliable with mixed data that includes both numbers and text.

Last relative position vs last row number

When building advanced formulas that create dynamic ranges, it’s often necessary to figure out the last location of data in a list. Depending on the data, this could be the last row with data, the last column with data, or the intersection of both. Note: we want the last *relative position* inside a given range, not the row number on the worksheet:

Post navigation

Previous Post:

How to calculate project complete percentage in Excel

Next Post:

Popularly Used Excel Functions and their examples

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Learn Basic Excel

Ribbon
Workbook
Worksheets
Format Cells
Find & Select
Sort & Filter
Templates
Print
Share
Protect
Keyboard Shortcuts

Categories

  • Charts
  • Data Analysis
  • Data Validation
  • Excel Functions
    • Cube Functions
    • Database Functions
    • Date and Time Functions
    • Engineering Functions
    • Financial Functions
    • Information Functions
    • Logical Functions
    • Lookup and Reference Functions
    • Math and Trig Functions
    • Statistical Functions
    • Text Functions
    • Web Functions
  • Excel VBA
  • Excel Video Tutorials
  • Formatting
  • Grouping
  • Others

Logical Functions

  • How to use IFS function in Excel
  • OR function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • Invoice status with nested if in Excel
  • IF with boolean logic in Excel
  • OR function Examples in Excel

Date Time

  • Convert date to text in Excel
  • How to calculate percent of year complete in Excel
  • How to calculate future date say 6 months ahead in Excel
  • How to calculate next scheduled event in Excel
  • Count day of week between dates in Excel

Grouping

  • If cell contains one of many things in Excel
  • Map inputs to arbitrary values in Excel
  • Group numbers with VLOOKUP in Excel
  • Group times into 3 hour buckets in Excel
  • Categorize text with keywords in Excel

General

  • How to Create Calendar in Excel
  • How to calculate percentage discount in Excel
  • Count cells that contain errors in Excel
  • Count cells that do not contain many strings in Excel
  • Excel Ribbon Quick Overview For Beginners
© 2025 xlsoffice . All Right Reserved. | Teal Smiles | Abbreviations And Their Meaning