Formula for getting the digit count between two numbers?

Hi, I am mathematically dense so I thought I would post this here. I was wondering if there was a formula where I can input two numbers in separate cells and calculate how many individual digits are within that numerical sequence.

For example, I was trying to do a puzzle and the solution was that there were 1128 digits/characters/integers between (and inclusive of) 1 and 412. In the puzzle the numbers of digits were given first and the person had to find out the answer of 412.

I would have loved to have solved it myself with pen and paper in the shortest way possible but like I mentioned before I am mathematically dense. Sometimes I use excel and play around with various functions and find the solution by accident but not this time.

It would be handy to have a small little tool in Excel that I could play with in the future in case I should need to solve something like this again.

If anyone knows of a formula I could use in Excel then that would be great but it would also be nice to know how to solve this on paper, too.

Thanks for any help.

Cheers,
Paul
(mix_mash)

Originally Posted by mix_mash

... I was wondering if there was a formula where I can input two numbers in separate cells and calculate how many individual digits are within that numerical sequence...

Here is a formula for any two numbers from the range of 0...999. Cell A1 houses the smaller one:

=MAX(0,MIN(9,B1)+1-MAX(0,A1))+MAX(0,MIN(99,B1)+1-MAX(10,A1))*2+MAX(0,MIN(999,B1)+1-MAX(100,A1))*3

Originally Posted by Root_

Here is a formula for any two numbers from the range of 0...999. Cell A1 houses the smaller one:

=MAX(0,MIN(9,B1)+1-MAX(0,A1))+MAX(0,MIN(99,B1)+1-MAX(10,A1))*2+MAX(0,MIN(999,B1)+1-MAX(100,A1))*3

Excellent! Thank you for that. It works nicely. I will study it and see if I can modify it just in case I need to go a step further and into the thousands.

Much obliged.

Cheers,
Paul
(mix_mash)

If A1 >0 and B1>0 ,try:

=SUMPRODUCT(LEN(ROW(INDIRECT(A1&":"&B1))))

Originally Posted by Phuocam

If A1 >0 and B1>0 ,try:

=SUMPRODUCT(LEN(ROW(INDIRECT(A1&":"&B1))))

Wow, this is just as good but shorter.

Thank you.

Paul
(mix_mash)

Originally Posted by AliGW

If that takes care of your original question, please select Thread Tools from the menu link above and mark this thread as SOLVED. Thanks.

OK, sorry about that. I am new to the 'solved' aspect of posting up a new thread. I may forget to do this in the future so please forgive me for this in advance.

Cheers,
Paul
(mix_mash)