The LEN function returns the length of the value in a text field.
Employees Table
| employeeID | employeeName | age |
|---|---|---|
| 1000 | John Smith | 40 |
| 1001 | Fred White | 27 |
| 1002 | Jane Scott | 53 |
| 1003 | Samuel Williams | 31 |
In this example, we want to find to a number of characters in each of the employees’ names.
Syntax
SELECT LEN(column_name)
FROM Table
Example
SELECT LEN(employeeName) as [Length of Name]
FROM employees
Results
| Length of Name |
|---|
| 10 |
| 10 |
| 10 |
| 15 |
The SQL LEN function is used to determine the length of the text in a field.











