Excel : How to select cells with more than a number of characters?

If you want to highlight cells which contain more than X characters, you can use Conditional formatting and function LEN().

For example: You want to highlight all cells in column A containing more than X characters.

1. Select column A
2. Click on Conditional formatting button -> New rule
3. In dialog chose last option (something like custom formula)
4. Fill formula =LEN(A1)>X (X is any integer larger than 0)
5. Set format for highlighting

See Excel help for better understanding.

PS: I don't have English version of the Excel, so some names can be little different.

My intepretation of your question is that you want to edit all the cells that have more than X number of characters.

The easiest way to do this, is in adjacent column use the LEN function to calculate the length of characters.

Then highlight both columns and click on filter (Data --> Filter). Filter the second column to display only rows that have numbers greater than X. For Excel 2010 this option is hidden under the Number Filters menu.

Finally, edit the first column as desired.

I have just done this and I think the top answer is correct but not well explained.

If you have a column (lets say "C") full of data starting at row 3, and you want all cells with more than 15 characters highlighted, select the first cell in the list and:

1. Go to conditional formatting > new rule.
2. Select "Use a formula to decide which cells to format"
3. Type: =Len(C3)>15, choose a format (colour etc.)
4. Hit "ok".

Then, select Cell C3 with right mouse click, drag down over the whole column of data and select "Fill Formatting".

That should do it.

I'm not aware of any straightforward solution, I'd do:

Calculate length of text in a new column then apply conditional formatting in the original column based on data in the new one.