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COUNTA(SPLIT) function to count number of words not working on Google Sheets


I am currently working on a Google Sheets project, and I'm facing a challenge with counting the number of words in a cell.

I have tried using the following formula:

=IF(A1="", "", COUNTA(SPLIT(A1, " ")))

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be working as expected, and I'm not getting the error "Formula parse error".

enter image description here

Sample data: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17Zel32C06M49KkLk2YQ6HQqEP68yutF8WZsE551ZxKc/edit?usp=sharing

The objective is to count the number of words in cell A2, excluding any leading or trailing spaces. However, the formula is not providing the desired result. I have tried other formulas such as

= LEN ( A1 ) - LEN ( SUBSTITUTE ( A1, " ", "" ) ) + 1

Could someone please help me with a reliable formula or an alternative approach to accurately count the number of words?

Thank you for your help!


Solution

  • Just change the commas to semi-colons, according to your locale ;)

    enter image description here

    =IF(A3="";"";COUNTA(SPLIT(A3;" ")))
    
    = LEN ( A3 ) - LEN ( SUBSTITUTE ( A3; " "; "" ) ) + 1