Dynamic COUNTIF looking for text referenced in cell searching in comma-separated string

Hey all,

I we have a series of emails that go out every week to people for educational purposes. I have been asked to provide a weekly report showing how many emails are going out for each topic so we know what is the most popular.

The report that I recieve is based on the use and kicks out the emails they received for that week in comma sepreated format like this:
Asymmetric Information; Externalities; Multiple Email Notification; Poverty & Inequality; Public Goods


I am trying to dynamically count the number of times each topic has gone out on another tab (Week 11). So far I have found that I can do this:

=COUNTIF(Table1[Week 11],"*Asymmetric Information*")

However, is there a way to reference the text I am searching for in another cell for the lookup vs having to type it each time?

I have a list of topics that is quite long in Column A on my summary sheet and I need to keep doing this list every week for historical purposes so it would be much easier to be able to drag the formula down the list.


Cell A3 contains Asymmetric Information (which I need to cound how many times it appears on the sheet Table1[Week 11]


Thank you!

Yes, that worked, thank you so much!