Count in Excel

The COUNT function's job is to only add up the cells in a selected range that contain numbers. It ignores empty cells or those contain text. If a number is later added to an empty cell the function will be automatically updated to include this new data.

COUNTIF combines two other commonly used functions – the COUNT function mentioned above and the IF function.

The COUNT function will tell you the number of cells in a selected range that contain numbers. The IF function allows you to have different results occur depending on whether a specific condition is met or not. So what COUNTIF will do is count up the number of cells in a range where the data meets a condition that you specify.

Excel's COUNTIFS function can be used to count up the number of data records in a selected range that match specific criteria.

COUNTIFS extends the usefulness of the COUNTIF function by allowing you to specify from 2 to 127 criteria rather than just one as in COUNTIF.

This text only tutorial on the COUNTIF function is intended for those who are comfortable using functions in Excel and who do not required detailed information about entering functions into a worksheet.

This text only tutorial on the COUNTIFS function is intended for those who are comfortable using functions in Excel and who do not required detailed information about entering functions into a worksheet.

The COUNTA function is not as well-known as the COUNT function but it might be the more useful of the two. What COUNTA does is count up the number of cells containing data – either numbers or labels in a selected range.

COUNTBLANK doesn't count cells containing data of any type.  Its looking for those cells in your spreadsheet that are empty or blank hence the name. One reason why this might be useful is to locate problem areas in your spreadsheet. By counting up the blank or empty cells in a range you can find out if you have too many or too few.

The AutoCOUNT feature in Excel provides a quick way to count numbers in Excel. What it does is insert the COUNT function into a cell and auto-select the range of data to be totalled by the function.