How to count words in a cell using excel functions

I was doing some weird analysis on corporate mission statements and I had to count the number of words in each cell. That is when I realized there is no formula to calculate the number of words in a cell, I was too lazy to write an UDF for that, so I figured out a nearly perfect way to calculate no. of words in a cell using existing formulas.

If you want to calculate the no. of words in cell a1, then use the formula:
=len(a1)-len(substitute(a1," ",""))+1

What this does is, it calculates the number of spaces in a cell and adds 1 to it, thus almost finding the number of words in a cell. I say almost because, if a cell has “this blog rocks,really!”, this formula will calculate the words as 3, where as there are 4 words in there 🙂

But that is for you to think 😉

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