Skip to content
Free Excel Tutorials
  • Home
  • Excel For Beginners
  • Excel Intermediate
  • Advanced Excel For Experts

Data Analysis

  • How to Create Area Chart in Excel
  • Excel Frequency Function Example
  • Managing Conditional Formatting Rules in Excel
  • How to conditionally sum numeric data in an Excel table using SUMIFS
  • How to Use Solver Tool in Excel

References

  • How to get last column number in range in Excel
  • Get nth match with INDEX / MATCH in Excel
  • How to get relative row numbers in a range in Excel
  • Approximate match with multiple criteria in Excel
  • How to get first row number in range in Excel

Data Validations

  • Excel Data validation only dates between
  • Prevent invalid data entering in specific cells
  • Excel Data validation require unique number
  • Excel Data validation don’t exceed total
  • Excel Data validation specific characters only

Count cells that contain five characters

by

This tutorial shows how to Count cells that contain five characters using the example below;

Formula

=COUNTIF(range,"?????")

Explanation

To count the number of cells that contain a certain number of characters text, you can use the COUNTIF function. In the example above  “?” is a wildcard matching any single character. In the example, the active cell contains this formula:

=COUNTIF(B4:B9,"?????")

How this formula works

COUNTIF counts the number of cells in the range that contain five characters by matching the content of each cell against the pattern “?????”, which is supplied as the criteria for COUNTIF. The “?” symbol is a wildcard in Excel that means “match any single character”, so this pattern will count cells that contain any five characters. The count of cells that match this pattern is returned as a number which, in the example, is the number 2.

Post navigation

Previous Post:

How to use Excel CHOOSE Function

Next Post:

Customize Ribbon In Excel

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Learn Basic Excel

Ribbon
Workbook
Worksheets
Format Cells
Find & Select
Sort & Filter
Templates
Print
Share
Protect
Keyboard Shortcuts

Categories

  • Charts
  • Data Analysis
  • Data Validation
  • Excel Functions
    • Cube Functions
    • Database Functions
    • Date and Time Functions
    • Engineering Functions
    • Financial Functions
    • Information Functions
    • Logical Functions
    • Lookup and Reference Functions
    • Math and Trig Functions
    • Statistical Functions
    • Text Functions
    • Web Functions
  • Excel VBA
  • Excel Video Tutorials
  • Formatting
  • Grouping
  • Others

Logical Functions

  • IF function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • IF with wildcards in Excel
  • How to return blank in place of #DIV/0! error in Excel
  • IFNA function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • How to use Excel AND Function

Date Time

  • MINUTE function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • How to calculate next day of week in Excel
  • Get day name from date in Excel
  • Two ways to sum time over 30 minutes in Excel
  • How to show last updated date stamp in Excel

Grouping

  • How to randomly assign people to groups in Excel
  • How to randomly assign data to groups in Excel
  • Map inputs to arbitrary values in Excel
  • Running count group by n size in Excel
  • Group arbitrary text values in Excel

General

  • How to generate random number weighted probability in Excel
  • How to calculate percent variance in Excel
  • How to Delete Cells, Row and Rows in Excel
  • Automatically fill series of cells in Excel using AutoFill
  • Check if multiple cells have same value in Excel
© 2026 xlsoffice . All Right Reserved. | Teal Smiles | Abbreviations And Their Meaning