Counting number of cells with a symbol

**jolthof** · 01-06-2012, 12:50 PM

I have columns and use a symbol (webdings dot) in some cells. I need to sum the total symbols in a column. How would I do this? Thanks!

**NBVC** · 01-06-2012, 12:58 PM

Find out what Ascii code the character is... i.e. in adjacent cell enter =CODE(A1) where A1 contains a symbol.

Then incorporate in a COUNTIF function and putting the code you found in a CHAR() function....

e.g.
=COUNTIF(A1:A100,CHAR(10))

where 10 (or 010) is the code yielded with the CODE() function...

**dilipandey** · 01-06-2012, 12:58 PM

Hi jolthof,

Welcome to the forum.
To count the symbol (character), you can use COUNTIF function.
It would be better if you could upload a sample file. Thanks.

Regards,
DILIPandey

<click on below 'star' if this helps>

**Richard Buttrey** · 01-06-2012, 12:59 PM

Hi,

I presume you do mean 'count' as in your title rather than 'sum' as in your text. Assuming you mean the dot is the webdings character number 7 then just

=COUNTIF(A:A,CHAR(7))

**jolthof** · 01-06-2012, 01:01 PM

NBVC - thank you for such a quick reply! this was my first time posting to this forum. Im loving it. I actually figured out how to do this moments after posting. I used: =COUNTA(D4:D75) and it did the job! I suppose if i had other data within those cells i would need to do it your way. thanks again!!

**Phraedrique** · 01-06-2012, 01:02 PM

Have you tried the =countif() function? for instance, you could try the following =COUNTIF(A1:A45,"◄") the ◄ is entered using the ASCII character code Alt+785 you may need to find the ASCII char code for the specific Webdings character that you are using in your sheet.