Count the number of individual entries in a cell - excel

Question

Is it possible to count the number of individual entries in a cell?
For example 2+2+4-1 = 4 entries
Using the count formula counts the entries as 1
I want to calculate the number of adjustments made in a particular period.
Each +/- in an individual cell represents 1 adjustment.

Answer 1

Assuming you're referring to a text cell, the trick is to count the symobols you'd like to find. Before we dig into that, if you want to enter this data as text, you can use the ` symbol (Usually to the left of the 1 key on your keyboard) before entering your text to make sure it gets processed as text.
If you want to verify that it is text, you can use the TYPE function and look for a return result of 2 (check the link for other possible return types)
There are no direct functions to count characters in Excel, so the trick is to find the length of the original text and subtract it from the length of a new text where you have removed all of the special characters. You mentioned you were trying to count the entries (i.e. the numbers), but you said your goal was to ultimately count the number of '+/-' operations. Since counting numbers can be tricky with excel formulas (since we'll get hung up on 2 and 3 digit numbers), I am going to approach this problem from the perspective of counting the operations you are looking for. So here is a basic example:
length("2+1") = 3
- length("21") = 2 (we replaced the + with "" [blank])
= 1
So we know there is 1 '+' since we replaced it. The appropriate functions used to accomplish this are LEN and SUBSTITUTE
Since you can only find one symbol at a time using the SUBSTITUTE function, we must take the output of the first formula, and give it to the second formula, and so on and so forth. Ultimately, we can put together as many functions as we need to achieve the desired result.
So we start with + for your example (And assuming your data is in A1)
=LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"+",""))
which gives us a result of 2. But we also need to find the - symbol. So we wrap another SUBSTITUTE:
=LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"+",""),"-",""))
You have said you wanted to count the number of +/- in the cell, and this does accomplish that, but if you want to expand it to more mathematical operators, you simply add more SUBSTITUTE functions (here is a complete function where I've added * and /)
=LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"+",""), "-",""),"*",""),"/",""))

Answer 2

Well, this formula would replace all your numbers with "" and then Count the +/- and adds one, should do it, but is ugly:
=LEN(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1;"0";"");"1";"");"2";"");"3";"");"4";"");"5";"");"6";"");"7";"");"8";"");"9";""))+1
Could probably be done with RegEx, but I don't know how to do that in formulas
This makes 31+12+3-4 to ++-, Counts the LEN (3) and adds 1