Excel: Calculate Average of Numbers Separated by Commas

Excel is an incredibly powerful and versatile tool that can be used to quickly and easily crunch large amounts of data and generate useful insights. One of the many things Excel can do is calculate the average of numbers separated by commas. This is a useful feature for quickly finding the average of multiple numbers without having to add them together by hand. In this article, we’ll discuss the importance of being able to calculate the average of numbers separated by commas in Excel and how it can help you better analyze your data.


You can use the following formula to calculate the average value of numbers in a cell in Excel that are separated by commas:

=IFERROR(AVERAGE(--MID(SUBSTITUTE(","&A2,",",REPT(" ",LEN(A2))),ROW(INDIRECT("1:"&LEN(A2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2,",",""))+1))*LEN(A2),LEN(A2))),A2)

This particular formula calculates the average of the comma-separated values in cell A2.

For example, if cell A2 contains 1,2,3 then this formula would return 2 since this is the average of these values:

Average: (1+2+3) / 3 = 2

The following example shows how to use this formula in practice.

Example: Calculate Average of Numbers Separated by Commas in Excel

Suppose we have the following column of comma-separated values in Excel:

Suppose we would like to calculate the average value in each cell in column A.

If we simply tried to use the AVERAGE() function, we would receive a #DIV/0! error in each cell because this function cannot handle comma-separated values:

Instead, we must type the following formula into cell B2:

=IFERROR(AVERAGE(--MID(SUBSTITUTE(","&A2,",",REPT(" ",LEN(A2))),ROW(INDIRECT("1:"&LEN(A2)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2,",",""))+1))*LEN(A2),LEN(A2))),A2)

We can then click and drag this formula down to each remaining cell in column B:

Excel average of numbers separated by commas

Column B now displays the average of each list of comma-separated values in column A.

  • The average of 2,4,5,5,7,13 is 6.
  • The average of 3,5,6,8 is 5.5.
  • The average of 10,12,14,14,15,19 is 14.

And so on.


In conclusion, the formula presented in this article is an efficient way to calculate the average of numbers in a cell in Excel that are separated by commas. This formula can be used in many types of data analysis and Excel-based operations. Additionally, this article provides some useful examples of how to use the formula in practice. For more information about using Excel, please refer to the resources provided in this article.

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