LEN Function in MS-Excel

	C	D
3	Text	Length
4	Alan Jones	10	=LEN(C4)
5	Bob Smith	9	=LEN(C5)
6	Carol Williams	14	=LEN(C6)
7	Cardiff	7	=LEN(C7)
8	ABC123	6	=LEN(C8)

What Does It Do?

This function counts the number of characters, including spaces and numbers, in a piece of text.

Syntax

=LEN(Text)

Formatting

No Special formatting is needed.

Example

This example shows how the =LEN() function is used in a formula which extracts the second name from a text entry containing both first and second names.

	C	D
23	Original Text
24	Carol Williams	6	=FIND(" ",C24)
			This is the position of the space.
27	Carol Williams	8	=LEN(C24)-FIND(" ",C24)

                                                               This is the length of the second name.

                                                               Calculated by taking the overall length of the
                                                               complete name and subtracting the position of the 
                                                               space.
                                                     
                                                               =RIGHT(C24,LEN(C24)-FIND(" ",C24))

                                                               This is just the second name.

                                                               Calculated by using the =RIGHT() function to
                                                               extract the rightmost characters up to the length 
                                                               of the second name.