Excel offers more than one count function and each is very useful. Basically, you can count the number of cells in a range that are empty and not empty. You can count "conditionally". We shall look at these counting ideas and try to illustrate their usefulness.
In
this example, a record is kept of who has completed some task. X's are placed
beside the names of the people completing the task.
How many are missing something? The Countblank function will scan the range of cells and return the number of cells that are blank...the number missing. Not a big deal with only 6 people, but suppose the list was much larger, like 376!
The
Count function will look at a range of cells and return
the number of cells containing a number.
Perhaps someone wants to know the number of makeup tests that will have to be given. Again, no big deal with a class of 6...but what about a larger list?
The
CountA function will work across a range of cells and check
for cells that contain ANY type of data.
This is slightly different from the Count function which looks at ranges of cells containing numbers.
The
Conditional counting function is most useful. The format
is to specify the range and then specify the condition or relationship to
count.
A medium size school might want to count the number of students in danger of flunking using the Countif function.