How to count characters and words in Excel

The Count Characters tool will help you quickly find out how many words or characters your data range contains or even count the number of specific chars in the selection. You can get the result as values or ready-made formulas.

Before you start

We care about your data. Always choose to Back up the worksheet so that original table remains intact.

How to get chars and words count in Excel

On the Ablebits Tools tab, in the Calculate group, click Count Characters and select Count Characters or Count Words:
Run the add-in from the Excel's ribbon.

The add-in offers you the following options:
The Count Characters options.

  1. This field lets you specify the needed range of cells.
    Note. Whether you select the entire table or a few columns, only the leftmost column of the highlighted range will be processed.

    To change the range, select the cells with values you'd like to count in your Excel worksheet or enter a different range in the field manually.

  2. Click the Expand selection icon to select the current column.
  3. Pick the Count characters option if you want to see how many symbols each cell contains.
  4. Select Count the following characters and enter the character of interest to see how many times it occurs in the selected range. Opt for Case-sensitive to perform case-sensitive search.
  5. Choose the Count words option to find out the number of words within the range you selected.
  6. Tick off the Insert as formula checkbox to paste the results as the LEN function and recalculate them if the source data changes.
  7. Have the add-in Back up the worksheet. We recommend keeping this option checked since Excel doesn't let you cancel changes made by add-ins.

Click Insert Results and get a new column with the counted results to the right of the source column.