Formula to tally total percentage based on whether or not certain fields are blank

Good morning, folks; need a little help. I think I’m over thinking this; feels like it should be relatively simple...

I have an Excel spreadsheet with columns that represent the date 5 steps of a process were completed, i.e.: “Step 1” (Column A) was completed on 4/29/2016, “Step 2” (Column B) on 4/30/2016, etc. Given the 5 separate columns (A through E,) I’m looking for a formula to drop in Column F that looks at whether or not each of the fields is populated with a date to tally a total percentage of the process completed, i.e.: if only Columns A and D are populated with a date (not blank,) the process is 40% complete (each step being roughly 20% of the overall process.)

I’ve tried nesting “IF” statements to add “0.2” for each populated date, but as the function stops at the first instance of TRUE, I can’t get it to work out logically in cases where say Column A is populated, B is blank and C is populated or any potential combination of blanks and non-blanks between the 5 columns.

I hope this makes sense and someone can lend a hand; thanks in advance!

So A and C can be populated but B be blank? Is this a general rule i.e. there is no requirement for consecutive cells to be completed? And A+C = 40% or 60%?

Originally Posted by Special-K

Definitely overthinking :-)
If each step defines 20% of the overall process the calculation should just be

number of dates entered in the range * 20%
ie

=COUNTA(A1:E1)*20%

Oh, good lord; I'm an idiot. Evidently, the coffee hasn't quite kicked in yet.

That works perfectly, my friend; thank you so much. If I'm lucky, I'm done being dumb for the day because there's a lot of it left...

Originally Posted by JohnTopley

So A and C can be populated but B be blank? Is this a general rule i.e. there is no requirement for consecutive cells to be completed? And A+C = 40% or 60%?

Thanks for the response, but (ironically) Special-K has already helped "special" me! But to answer your question, no, there is no requirement that cells be filled consecutively; yours was the first solution I tried until I was told so.