Forum Discussion

ArchiveUser's avatar
ArchiveUser
Qrew Captain
7 years ago

If there a way to use a formula field to calculate the number of characters in a text field?

I have a multi-line text field that contains SKUs (letters, numbers, and hyphens).

I want a character count of this field. How is this accomplished?

If the hyphens are a problem, I can account for them separately and a letter/number count would still be extremely helpful.
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Formulas and functions
  • KevinSlider's avatar
    KevinSlider
    Qrew Trainee
    7 years ago
    Hello, the function is length. Let me know if this helps.

    Length([Text Field])
  • ArchiveUser's avatar
    ArchiveUser
    Qrew Captain
    7 years ago
    Thank you for your response. This is definitely getting me closer.

    More context for my exact goal - my users paste in values like the ones below.

    29945-0059 59676-0001 59676-0000 59676-0003

    - Each 10-character string represents a different product. 
    - I want to figure out how many they pasted in. 
    - The example above should return "4". 

    My plan was to get a character count and divide by 10 (since there are 10 characters in each product code). The Length function includes extra characters (not sure if they are spaces or line breaks) which is messing this up. 

    Any way to get rid of extra characters? Or just count the hyphens? 

    I really appreciate help. 





    • KevinSlider's avatar
      KevinSlider
      Qrew Trainee
      7 years ago
      You can use Length(Trim([Text Field])) but that only takes out the extra spaces in my experience.

      If you assume that the length is always a 10 character string plus a delimiter, you can still take your total and divide by 10 and round down.

      Ceil(Length(Trim([Text Field]))/10)

      This way, in your example the total would be 43 characters total, divided by 10 to get 4.3, rounded down to 4.

      Does this help?