Count specific characters in a cell

[JGreg7]

Is there a way to count the number of times a specific character occurs in a
specific cell?

For example, if cell A1 has "ABC123ABC" and I wanted to count the number of
occurances that "A" showed up, and wanted the out put to be in B1. In this
example the desired result would equal "2".

 

[Arceedee]

It can be done by splitting the data into separate columns and then using a
countif formula but that may not be feasable in the s/s. If you have a whole
column of similar data then it's simple to use the Text to Columns feature.
More info would help.

I hope someone can come up with a way because that would be helpful to me
also.

 

[T. Valko]

Try this...

=LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"A",""))

Note that this is case sensitive.

If A1 = aBC123ABC the formula will return 1. Only the upper case "A" is
being counted. Likewise, if the formula was:

=LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"a",""))

Then in this case only the lower case "a" will be counted.

If you want to ignore case then try this version:

=LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(UPPER(A1),UPPER("A"),""))

That will count both lower and upper case "a" or "A".

 

[Luke M]

=LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"A",""))

or, for a non-case-sensitive version:
=LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(UPPER(A1),"A",""))

 

[JGreg7]

The text strings I have to deal with are actually fairly long. I have been
converting them to text and importing them into Excel as delimited files
using the desired character as the delimiter. I then have to sort and tag
the data and then reassenmble the text strings. Although this works, it is
very tedious. There must be a better way.

 

[Arceedee]

Luke has the answer. Thanks Luke.

The text strings I have to deal with are actually fairly long. I have been
converting them to text and importing them into Excel as delimited files
using the desired character as the delimiter. I then have to sort and tag
the data and then reassenmble the text strings. Although this works, it is
very tedious. There must be a better way.

 

[JGreg7]

Thank you all for your help with this - I appreciate it.

 

[T. Valko]

You're welcome. Thanks for the feedback!