Try this:

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

Biff

"Keith R" wrote in message
...
I'm sure there is an easy way to do this; I just haven't had to do it
before so I'm not sure what the most elegant solution is.

I have a column of values, and within each cell, there are an unknown
number of commas (e.g. "323,76,12,43"). I need to identify (for each cell,
in the next column over) how many commas are present. The basic instr or
match type functions (I think) only provide the first match location, not
a total number of matches. Maybe something like the opposite of REPT, only
something that ignores all the other text and just gives the count of the
target string that is already repeated in the cell.

Any suggestions on a preferred approach?

Thank you,
Keith