Formula to count the characters in a cell, but exclude certain characters (plural)

[Thistles]

I'm learning as I go with Excel, and can't get my head around how to write this formula (if it is even possible).

I want to count the characters in a cell, but exclude certain characters (plural). E.g. coding and spaces. I know how to count the characters and exclude only spaces:

=LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2," ",""))

I want to add to this formula so that it counts the characters in a cell, excluding not just spaces but other characters. For the purposes of this example, let's say I want to exclude both the letters x and y from the character count.

I tried various iterations, all of which threw up errors, then this one didn't but it doesn't work (gives me the wrong count):

=LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2,"x",""))&LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2,"y",""))

Is there a way to do it?

Thanks

 

[arthurbr]

Perhaps =LEN(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A2,"y",""),"x",""))

 

[Thistles]

Yes, brilliant, that works. Thank you very much.