Counting Blank or Empty Cells in Excel

Excel COUNTBLANK function

By
Ted French
Ted French
Writer
Former Lifewire writer Ted French is a Microsoft Certified Professional who teaches and writes about spreadsheets and spreadsheet programs.
lifewire's editorial guidelines
Updated on November 3, 2019
Excel's COUNTBLANK function

 Ted French / Lifewire

Excel offers several count functions that quantify the number of cells in a selected range that contain a specific type of data.

The job of the COUNTBLANK function is to count the number of cells in a selected range that either contains no data or contains a formula that returns a blank or null value

Syntax and Arguments

A function's syntax refers to the layout of the function and includes the function's name, brackets, comma separators, and arguments.

The syntax for the COUNTBLANK function is: 

=COUNTBLANK(range)

The range, which is a required argument, is the group of cells the function must search. The range argument must be a contiguous group of cells.

Since COUNTBLANK does not permit multiple ranges to be entered for the range argument, several instances of the function may be entered in a single formula to find the number of blank or empty cells in two or more non-contiguous ranges. For example: 

=COUNTBLANK(A2:A10) + COUNTBLANK(B2:B10)

Alternative Using CountIf

Excel supports more than one way to arrive at your intended, correct answer. For example, the formula 

=COUNTIF(A2:A10,"")

uses the COUNTIF function to find the number of blank or empty cells in the range A2 to A10 and gives the same results as COUNTBLANK.

Was this page helpful?