Using Excel's COUNTA Function
If you're familiar with Excel's
To solve the problem, Excel has a similar, equally-useful function:
The basic COUNTA function
Like
=COUNTA (value_or_range ,value_or_range_2 (optional) ...)
When fed one or more ranges of cells or values,
Here's an example of
=COUNTA (5 ,"Boston" )
Output:2
The above formula outputs the number
Note that
=COUNTA (5 ,"Seven" ,10 ,#N/A ,"" )
Output:5
This formula spits out the number
COUNTA with a range
Of course, counting the number of static inputs to a
In the following example, a SnackWorld analyst has a list of customer names paired with e-mail addresses. Some of the customers have left their e-mail addresses, but some haven't — so not every name is matched to an address. The analyst wants to know how many e-mail addresses and customers are on the list, respectively. So, she writes the following formula:
=COUNTA (C3:C8 )
Output:2
This formula evaluates to
The same formula works to count the number of customers on the range
=COUNTA (B3:B8 )
Output:6
When to use Excel's COUNTA function
Now that you know how to use
- Count the number of customers on a customer list;
- Count the number of transactions made in a given time period;
- Find how many tests have been submitted and scored by students; or
- Calculate the number of days of data available in a data set.
Questions or comments? Let us know below!
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