Skip to content
xlsoffice. All Rights Reserved
  • Home
  • Excel For Beginners
  • Excel Intermediate
  • Advanced Excel For Experts

Lookup and Reference Examples

  • Create hyperlink with VLOOKUP in Excel
  • How to use Excel FORMULATEXT function
  • How to get address of named range in Excel
  • Last row number in range
  • Find closest match in Excel

Data Analysis Examples

  • Randomize/ Shuffle List in Excel
  • Conditional Formatting New Rule with Formulas in Excel
  • How to create a Histogram in Excel
  • Use Data Form to input, edit and delete records in Excel
  • Data Series in Excel

Data Validation Examples

  • Data validation must not exist in list
  • Excel Data validation allow weekday only
  • How To Create Drop-down List in Excel
  • Excel Data validation with conditional list
  • Excel Data validation date in next 30 days

How to count specific words in a range in Excel

by

To count how many times a specific a word (or any substring) appears inside a range of cells, you can use a formula based on the SUBSTITUTE, LEN, and SUMPRODUCT functions.

 Formula

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

Explanation

In the example shown, the formula in C11 is:

=SUMPRODUCT((LEN(B5:B8)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(B5:B8,C2,"")))/LEN(C2))

Note: The formula on this page counts instances of a word in a range. For example, if a cell contains two instances of a word, it will contribute 2 to the total count. If you just want to count cells that contain a specific word, see this simple formula based on the COUNTIF function.

Worked Example:   Count cells that contain text in Excel

How this formula works

In the example shown, B5:B8 is the range to check, and C2 contains the text (word or substring) to count.

For each cell in the range, SUBSTITUTE removes the substring from the original text and LEN calculates the length of the text without the substring. This number is then subtracted from the length of the original text. The result is the number of characters that were removed by SUBSTITUTE.

Worked Example:   Exact match lookup with SUMPRODUCT in Excel

Then, the number of characters removed is divided by the length of the substring. So, if a substring or word is 5 characters long, and there are 10 characters missing after it’s been removed from the original text, we know the substring/word appeared twice in the original text.

Because the above calculation is wrapped in the SUMPRODUCT function, the result is an array that contains a number for each cell in the range. These numbers represent the number of occurrences of the substring in each cell. For this example, the array looks like this: {1;1;0;1}

Worked Example:   Get first name from name with comma -- Manipulating NAMES in Excel

Finally, SUMPRODUCT sums together all items in the array to get the total occurrences of substring in the range of cells.

Ignoring case

SUBSTITUTE is a case-sensitive function, so it will match case when running a substitution. If you need to count both upper and lower case occurrences of a word or substring, use the UPPER function inside SUBSTITUTE to convert the text to uppercase before running the substitution:

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

Post navigation

Previous Post:

How to count specific characters in a cell in Excel

Next Post:

How to extract word containing specific text in Excel

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
  • How to strip non-numeric characters in Excel
  • Find function vs Search function in Excel
  • Convert Text to Numbers in Excel
  • NUMBERVALUE function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • How to create email address from name in Excel
  • Get last weekday in month in Excel
  • Excel Date & Time Functions Example
  • Calculate retirement date in Excel
  • Sum race time splits in Excel
  • DAYS function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • PMT, RATE, NPER, PV and FV Financial Functions in Excel
  • ACCRINTM function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • ODDFYIELD function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • How to calculate annuity for interest rate in excel
  • RRI function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
Acronyms, Abbreviations, Initialism & What They Stand For
© 2022 xlsoffice . All Right Reserved. | Teal Smiles