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How to count occurrences of specific character in a cell in Excel?

Author Siluvia Last modified

Sometimes, you may need to count how many times a specific character appears in a cell. As below screenshot shown, you need to count number of character “o” appearing in cell A1, how to achieve this? In this article, we will show you methods of counting occurrences of specific character in Excel.

A screenshot showing a cell with character occurrences cell highlighted

Count occurrences of specific character in a cell with Formula
Count occurrences of specific character in a cell with Kutools for Excel

Count occurrences of specific character in a cell with Formula

In this section, we introduce you a formula to count occurrences of specific character in a cell.

1. Select a blank cell for locating the result.

2. Type the below formula into it, and then press the Enter key. Then the occurrences of character “o” are counted and listed in selected cell.

=LEN(A2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2,"o",""))

A screenshot showing the formula to count occurrences of a specific character in Excel

Notes:

1) In the formula, A2 contains the text string which you want to count occurrences of specific character from.
2) “o” is the specific character you are going to count. Please change them as you need.
3) This formula is case sensitive.

Count occurrences of specific character in a cell with Kutools for Excel

The above formula may be difficult for you to remember, here we introduce you the COUNTCHAR utility of Kutools for Excel, with this utility, you can easily count how many times a specific character appears in a cell.

Kutools for Excel offers over 300 advanced features to streamline complex tasks, boosting creativity and efficiency. Itegarate with AI capabilities, Kutools automates tasks with precision, making data management effortless. Detailed information of Kutools for Excel...         Free trial...

1. Select a blank cell for locating the result, and then click Kutools > Kutools Functions > Statistical & Math > COUNTCHAR. See screenshot:

A screenshot of the COUNTCHAR option under Kutools Functions in Excel

2. In the Function Arguments dialog box, select the cell which contains the text string for counting the specific character in the Within_text box (here we select cell A2), type the character into the Find_text box (in this case, the character is “o”) that you want to count, and then click the OK button. See screenshot:

A screenshot showing the Function Arguments dialog in Excel for counting specific characters

Then you will get the result in selected cell immediately.

A screenshot displaying the final result of the character count in a cell

Note: This feature is also case sensitive.

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