LEN function in Excel - Dashboard Guide

Dashboard Mode - LEN function

Dashboard Goal

Find out the length of text entries in a list to understand how many characters each entry contains.

Sample Data

Item	Description
1	Apple
2	Banana
3	Cherry Pie
4	Dragonfruit
5	Egg
6	Fig
7	Grape Juice

Dashboard Components

• Text Length Column: Shows the number of characters in each Description.
  Formula in cell C2: =LEN(B2)
  Drag down to C8.
• Average Length: Shows the average number of characters in all descriptions.
  Formula in cell C9: =SUBTOTAL(1,C2:C8)
• Longest Description Length: Shows the maximum number of characters.
  Formula in cell C10: =SUBTOTAL(4,C2:C8)
• Shortest Description Length: Shows the minimum number of characters.
  Formula in cell C11: =SUBTOTAL(5,C2:C8)

Dashboard Layout

+----------------------+---------------------+
|      Descriptions     |   Text Length (LEN)  |
|  (Column B)           |   (Column C)         |
|  Apple                | 5                   |
|  Banana               | 6                   |
|  Cherry Pie           | 10                  |
|  Dragonfruit          | 11                  |
|  Egg                  | 3                   |
|  Fig                  | 3                   |
|  Grape Juice          | 11                  |
+----------------------+---------------------+
| Average Length: 7.0                        |
| Longest Length: 11                        |
| Shortest Length: 3                        |
+-------------------------------------------+

Interactivity

You can add a filter to show only descriptions containing certain words or letters. When you filter the descriptions, the Text Length column and the summary values (average, longest, shortest) update automatically to reflect only the visible rows.

Self Check

If you add a filter to show only descriptions with the letter "e", which rows remain visible? What is the new average length shown?

Key Result

Dashboard shows the length of text in descriptions using LEN function with summary statistics.