Count specific characters in a cell - Excel

Question

I would like to count all special characters (!%_*?+-,) in a cell.

For example:

With this formula =LEN(D2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(D2;\"!\";\"\")) i

Answer 1

Here is a simple version I created:

Function CountSpecialCharacters(rng As Range) As String
    Dim regEx As New RegExp, matches As MatchCollection

    With regEx
        .Global = True
        .MultiLine = True
        .IgnoreCase = False
        .Pattern = "[^a-zA-Z0-9]" '~~~> this counts any character not a to z or a number
    End With

    Set matches = regEx.Execute(rng)

    CountSpecialCharacters = matches.Count
End Function

Two points:

1. In the VBA editor you need to set References > Microsoft VBScript Regular Expressions 5.5
2. You call the function on your spreadsheet e.g. =CountSpecialCharacters(A2)