The LEN function is a text function which returns the total character length of the string you have selected. This could be total length of a number, or a text string. If it is a number, LEN will only calculate from the first non-zero character until the last character which is not a trailing zero.

This is the format of the LEN function:

=LEN(CELL RANGE)

Here is an example of the LEN function:

=LEN(“Excellency is awesome!”) = 22

LEN function returning the total character count from the selected string

This function is valuable when you need to assess requirements such as minimum or maximum field dimensions (character counts), or when being used with functions such as LEFT, RIGHT, or MID, in order to return a subset of the characters within a string of text.

An example of a functional implementation of this would be evaluating if the product descriptions you have will fit on various platforms based on their limitations, such as the Twitter character count, Google search box results, or Facebook marketing campaigns.

ex: product descriptions are located in column C, and data begins in row 2

=LEN(C2)<280 = TRUE (will fit on Twitter)

=LEN(C2)<120 = FALSE (will not fit on Google search page)

=LEN(C2)<450 = TRUE (will fit on Facebook campaigns)