COUNT Function in Excel

Count is generally a function used to count number of Cells in Excel and returns the count of values that are numbers, generally cells that contains numbers.

Count function helps us count cells in excel. There are three different of counts in Excel. We will now discuss following tropic which is related to Count Function

1) How COUNT Function works in Excel?

2) How the COUNTA function works in Excel?

3) How COUNTBLANK function works in Excel?

 

How COUNT Function works in Excel?

The COUNT function will count cells that contain numbers. Let’s start with the most basic function COUNT.

 

Syntax
=COUNT(value1,[value2],…)

 

Arguments

Value1- An Item, cell reference, or range.
Value2- (Optional) An item, Cell reference, or range.

 

Example #1- Range

The function is counting the number of cells in a specific range. In the example shown, COUNT is set up to count numbers in the range C4:C11. So the formula will be =COUNT(C4:C11). COUNT returns 4, since there are 4 numeric value in the range C4:C11. All others cell will be ignored (texts, blanks)

Example #2- Random

The example below shows COUNT with 3 random value. Two of the value is a number and one is text. So formula will be =COUNT(100,50,Banana), so count returns 2.

 

How the COUNTA Function works in Excel?

If you want to count cells with any type of data (numbers, text, logic values, error value), simple replace COUNT by COUNTA. This will count all cells that are not blank.

 

Syntax
=COUNTA(value1,[value2],…)

 

Arguments

Value1- An Item, cell reference, or range.
Value2- (Optional) An item, Cell reference, or range.

 

In the below example we can see that by the using of COUNTA function we get the range (C4:C11) counts return which is 7. COUNTA does not count cells that are completely empty.

How COUNTBLANK function works in Excel?

The COUNTBLANK function will count cells that are empty. Cells that contain text, number, error, etc. are not counted. The syntax is =COUNTBLANK(range).

If we want to calculate the how many blanks cells in B3:F7 range. Then the formula will be =COUNTBLANK(B3:F7). It returns 5.

Note-

COUNT and COUNTBLANK both will count cells with formula that look empty, If the formula result is an empty string (“”). The empty string is treated as text and counted.