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How to sum cells if the corresponding string is of a certain length?

Author Sun Last modified

In Excel, we usually sum cells by some criteria, but have you ever tried to sum cells if their corresponding strings are of a certain length? For example, here are two lists in column A and column B, column A contains strings, and column B contains numbers, how can you sum the numbers in column B when the strings in column A are of 5-character length?

A screenshot of two Excel columns, one with strings and the other with numbers
Sum by string length

Sort by string length

arrow blue right bubble Sum by string length

To sum values by the string length in another column, you can apply a formula.

Select a cell that you want to put the summing result at, type this formula =SUMPRODUCT((LEN(A2:A17)=5)*B2:B17), press Enter key to get the result. See screenshot:
A screenshot showing the formula for summing cells based on string length in Excel

In the formula, A2:A17 is the column with strings where you check if they are of a specific length, B2:B17 is the column with values you want to sum, 5 indicates a 5-character length, which you can adjust as needed.

arrow blue right bubble Sort by string length

In some cases, you may want to sort data based on the string length which cannot be directly solved in Excel. However, if you have Kutools for Excel ā€“ a handy and powerful Excel add in, with its Advanced Sort feature, you can quickly sort data by the string length.

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1. Select the data range you want to sort, and click Kutools Plus > Sort > Advanced Sort. See screenshot:
A screenshot of the Kutools Advanced Sort option in Excel

2. In the Advanced Sort dialog, select the column you want to sort, and then specified Text length as the sorting rule, and then select the sorting order, check My data has headers if there are headers in the selection. See screenshot:
A screenshot of the Advanced Sort dialog box

3. Click Ok. Now the data has been sorted by string length. See screenshot:
A screenshot showing data sorted by string length using Kutools

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