A little Excel quirk to mention using LEN() with large numbers.

A little Excel quirk to mention. For as long as we can remember you could get the number of digits in a number by simply using =LEN() even though the input is a number, not text.

But have a look what happens for the larger numbers. LEN() returns either 19 or 20 even though the number is clearly a lot longer.

You need to convert the value explicitly to text then get the length ie =LEN(Text(value)) .

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That’s good practice anyway. LEN() can return unexpected results unless you’re specific.  For example using LEN on a date cell will return the length of the date number used by Excel.

See Also

• Big numbers rounded in Excel