Yes - it is the text function =LEN(A1)

Not sure what you mean by "match up". You can use the LEFT function on
abd1235, etc. such as =LEFT(A5,3) .. or maybe =LEFT(A5,LEN(A5)-5), then you
can do your matching, or you can sort the entire range by the column which
contains the shortened strings.



"Stan Altshuller" wrote in message
...
Hi all

1. is there a function to count the characters in a cell?
i.e. if I had the word "abra44" in cell A1 the function would return 6
2. I haveto match up words from column A to words in row 1
but its not an exact match, I need the last 5 letters of the values in row
1
ignored.
ie. i need to match up

abc

to a value in array of

abd 12345
abc 12345
abf 12345