One way:

=LEN(A1)

will count all the characters in cell A1.

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

will count all the non-space characters in A1

In article . com,
wrote:

Is there a formula that will count the number of characters, and spaces
between characters, in a short paragraph created by a string text? It
is acceptible if spaces cannot be counted. Thanks.

Michael