Excel Count Functions

Excel includes several 'count' functions that might be helpful to you in your quest to count data cells!

1. COUNTA - Counts the number of nonempty cells in a range
2. COUNT - Counts the number of cells in a range having numeric values
3. COUNTIF - Counts the number of nonempty cells in a range that meet a specified criterion
4. COUNTBLANK - Counts the number of empty cells in a range

Let's illustrate how each is used with the following spreadsheet.

COUNTA: This function will return the number of entries (numeric data AND text data) in the selected range of cells. This function's range must be a block of contiguous cells. The blue numbers represent the results of the COUNTA function on the specified range of cells.

=COUNTA(Range)

COUNT: This function will return the number of cells that contains NUMERIC data in the selected range of cells. This function's range must also be a block of contiguous cells. The red numbers represent the results of the COUNT function on the specified range of cells.

=COUNT(Range)

COUNTIF: This function will calculate the number of cells in a selected range that meet the criteria specified in a conditional value expression (as in <=50). The green numbers represent the results of the COUNTIF function for the specified block of cells.

=COUNTIF(Range,"Value")

COUNTBLANK: This function will count the number of blank cells in a range of contiguous cells. The fuchsia numbers represent the results of the COUNTBLANK function for the specified block of cells.

=COUNTBLANK(Range)