If the criterion for one of these functions is a string of 15+ of numerical
characters only - formatted as text, it will pick up as a match any string of
numerical characters only - formatted as text in the same length as the
criteria and the first 15 characters match the first 15 characters of the
criteria, even though the numerical characters past the 15th character does
not match to the criteria, (the reason is probably because these functions
are considering a value string €“ formatted as text as a numerical value, and
since excel does not keep the actual #s after 15 numerical values it just
keeps the 0s so these functions ignore the values after the 15 character
because they assume them to be 0s only, they just check the length to be the
same after the 15th character.)

Example:

A1: '1234567890123456
A2: '1234567890123457
B1: =Countif(A1:A2,A1) the result is 2




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