Countifs - How to exclude data

Hi

I am very new to Countifs and am having trouble finding the right formula for the following:

I have a column that contains various cells with a mixture of J9C,J9X,J9L etc etc. I want to count every cell that does not contain J9X.
I have tried "<>J9X", but it is bringing back the same count as all cells, so is not removing J9X cells.

Please could someone advise what I am doing wrong and how to do it right?

Thanks

"<>J9X" is the correct syntax for a criteria in countifs

I would guess that your cells probably have leading or trailing spaces in them, so they are like " J9X" or "J9X " or " J9X "

Can you attach a sample book ?

Try this ...

"<>*J9X*")

Thank you so much guys.

Just tried your suggestion Phuocam and it works!!

You have saved me a lot of pain :-)

You are welcome.

That just confirms the problem is that your cells contain extra characters.

I wouldn't advise to just leave it at that, and use the wildcards in the countifs functions.
You'd be better off in the long run cleaning up the source data and remove those extra characters.

Try using the TRIM function on that column to remove the extra spaces.