Ah ... of course. Thank you both.

Ken

This should be very simple, but I don't see how to do it without a macro:
How do you count the number of hyphens (for example) in a string?

abc-de-a32-ej2-wkjew-w should give 5
we2-232if should give 1
wekjf2 should give 0

=len(str)-len(substitute(str,"-","")

--ron