Excel Formula: Make text same length

If there is a list of texts with different lengths, for looking nicer, you can make these text with same length by adding trailing characters as below screenshot shown. Here it provides a formula which combines the LEN and REPT functions to handle it in Excel.
doc check if contains some but not others 1

Generic formula:



Text: the cell or text you want to change it to a fixed length.
Fix_length: the length of characters you want to use.
Char: the specific character you used to fix the length of text with.

How this formula work

Here will change the text strings in range C3:C7 to the same length – 8 characters, and output the results in range D3:D7, please use below formula in cell D3:


Press Enter key, the drag fill handle from D3 to D7 to change the texts to same length.
doc make text same length 2


LEN function: tthe LEN function counts the number of characters in the text.

REPT function: the REPT function repeats a character specific number of times. Here the formula =REPT("-",8-LEN(C3)) will repeat the character "-" a specific number of times based on the length of text in C3. You can see this formula as
= REPT("-",8-7)
= REPT("-",1)


If you want to add leading characters to make the texts in fixed length, you can use this formula


Sample File

doc sampleClick to download sample file

Relative Formulas

  • Check if a cell contains a specific text
    To check if a cell contains some texts in range A but does not contain the texts in range B, you can use an array formula which combines the COUNT, SEARCH and AND function in Excel
  • Check if a cell contains one of several values but exclude other values
    This tutorial will provide a formula to quickly handle the task that check if a cell contains one of things but excluding other values in Excel and explain the arguments of the formula.
  • Check if cell contains one of things
    Supposing in Excel, there is a list of values in column E, you want to check if the cells in column B contain all of the values in column E, and return TRUE or FALSE.
  • Check if cell contains number
    Sometimes, you may want to check if a cell contains numeric characters. This tutorial provides a formula which will return TRUE if the cell contains number, FALSE if cell does not contain number.

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