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The Excel COLUMNS function takes an Excel range and returns the number of columns that are contained within the range.

The format of the function is :

Where the Array argument is the range that you want to know the number of columns in.

Examples

The following spreadsheets show simple examples of the Excel COLUMNS function. The format of the function is shown in the spreadsheet on the left and the results are shown in the spreadsheet on the right.

Note that the formula in cell A3 returns 16,384, as this is the number of columns in Excel 2007. If this example were run in Excel 2003, it would return 256.