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

Data Analysis

  • How to create Checklist in Excel
  • Excel Line Chart
  • How To Filter Data in Excel
  • Error Bars in Excel
  • How to Create Column Chart in Excel

References

  • Merge tables with VLOOKUP in Excel
  • Left Lookup in Excel
  • Vlookup Examples in Excel
  • Approximate match with multiple criteria in Excel
  • Two-way lookup with VLOOKUP in Excel

Data Validations

  • Data validation must not exist in list
  • Excel Data validation allow uppercase only
  • Excel Data validation date in next 30 days
  • Excel Data validation date in specific year
  • Excel Data validation no punctuation

How to count specific characters in a range in Excel

by

If you need to count specific characters in a range of cells, you can do so with a formula that uses LEN and SUBSTITUTE, along with the SUMPRODUCT function.

Formula

=SUMPRODUCT(LEN(range)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(range,text,"")))

Explanation

In the example, the active cell contains this formula:

=SUMPRODUCT(LEN(B3:B7)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(B3:B7,"o","")))

How the formula works

For each cell in the range, SUBSTITUTE removes all the o’s from the text, then LEN calculates the length of the text without o’s. This number is then subtracted from the length of the text with o’s.

Because we are using SUMPRODUCT, the result of all this calculation is a list of items (an array), where there is one item per cell in the range, and each item a number based on the calculation described above. In other words, we have a list of character counts, with one character count per cell.

SUMPRODUCT then sums the numbers in this list and returns a total for all cells in the range.

SUBSTITUTE is a case-sensitive function, so it will match case when performing a substitution. If you need to count both upper and lower case occurrences of a specific character, use the UPPER function inside SUBSTITUTE to convert the text to uppercase before the substitution occurs. Then supply an uppercase character for the text that’s being counted.

The modified formula looks like this:

=SUMPRODUCT(LEN(range)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(UPPER(range),text,"")))

Post navigation

Previous Post:

Put names into proper case — Manipulating NAMES in Excel

Next Post:

Create One-dimensional and Two-dimensional Array

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Your email address will not be published.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

  • AND function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • Complete List of Excel Logical Functions, References and Examples
  • How to use Excel FALSE Function
  • Invoice status with nested if in Excel
  • OR function Examples in Excel

Date Time

  • Convert text timestamp into time in Excel
  • Convert date to text in Excel
  • Get month from date in Excel
  • Find Last Day of the Month in Excel
  • Get days between dates in Excel

Grouping

  • How to randomly assign data to groups in Excel
  • Map inputs to arbitrary values in Excel
  • Running count group by n size in Excel
  • Categorize text with keywords in Excel
  • Group numbers at uneven intervals in Excel

General

  • Find Most Frequently Occurring Word in Excel Worksheet
  • How to increase by percentage in Excel
  • How to password protect excel sheet?
  • Count cells less than in Excel
  • Mark Workbook as Final in Excel
© 2023 xlsoffice . All Right Reserved. | Teal Smiles | Abbreviations And Their Meaning