What it does: The LEN() function returns the length (number of characters) of a given text or string.

Plain English: This formula returns the number of characters in a string that you specify. The string can either be in “quotes” or a cell reference.

• Example 1: Len(“John”) = 4
• Example 2: Len(“John Smith”) = 10

This formula is one of the foundations of cleaning data because in conjunction with other text formulas it helps you measure exactly what’s going on inside a cell.

Arguments: LEN(Text)

• Text – The only argument it takes is the text you want to measure.

NOTE: In the second example above, notice how “John Smith” has a length of 10. That is because this formula also counts other characters like spaces, dashes, colons, single quotes, parentheses, etc…