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

You can do this with a simple array formula:

=SUM(LEN(A2) - LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2,Special_Characters,"")))

Special_Characters is a range listing all your special characters. You could manually enter them as an array constant if you prefer:

=SUM(LEN(A2) - LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2,{"%";"_";"*";"?";"+";"-";",";"!"},"")))   

but the named range seems simpler.

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To array-enter a formula, after entering the formula into the cell or formula bar, hold down ctrl + shift while hitting enter. If you did this correctly, Excel will place braces {...} around the formula.

If you prefer a VBA solution, I would suggest the code below. You will need to modify .Pattern to include any other characters you do NOT want to count. In the code below, any character that is not an upper or lower case letter, or a digit, will be counted as a special character.

Option Explicit
Function SpecialChars(S As String) As Long
    Dim RE As Object
Set RE = CreateObject("vbscript.regexp")
With RE
    .Global = True
    .Pattern = "[^A-Za-z0-9]"
    SpecialChars = Len(S) - Len(.Replace(S, ""))
End With
End Function

Answer 2

=8*LEN(D2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(D2;"!";""))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(D2;"%";""))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(D2;"_";""))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(D2;"*";"")) -LEN(SUBSTITUTE(D2;"?";""))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(D2;"+";""))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(D2;"-";""))-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(D2;",";""))

Answer 3

Using formulas only, not VBA, this is possible with the following two approaches:

Consider the text in A1:

First approach:

Multiple nested SUBSTITUTE:

=LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1,",",""),"-",""),"+",""),"?",""),"*",""),"_",""),"%",""),"!",""))

Second approach:

Using SUMPRDUKT for getting the MID function in array context to get each single charachter of the string in A1 compared with each single special character:

=SUMPRODUCT(--(MID(A1,ROW($1:$1000),1)={"!","%","_","*","?","+","-",","}))

Answer 4

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)