Q. How can I quickly check the longest length value in an Excel column?

A. I recently had a very large Excel spreadsheet where I needed to know the longest value for one of the columns. I found an easy way—just go to the end of the column and type

=MAX(LEN(C1:C2886))

Replace the C1:C2886 with your column and number of rows, then press Ctrl+Shift+Enter. It's very important you don't just press Enter, it won't work.

The cell will now show the maximum length of the largest value for the column!