Countif function for instances of text string contained

Originally Posted by Garbunkel

Hello,

I have a 2 column worksheet, & am attempting to
get a count of how many rows contain certain text
strings. Example:
269A560-01_39
269A560-01_41 5
269A560-01_42
269A560-01_43
269A560-01_45
269A560-01_46
269A560-01_57

The second column has a count of how many times
the fragment "269A560-01_4" occurs & if I hard code
that fragment into the formula, it works fine:

=COUNTIF(A1:A9,"269A560-01_4"&"*")

What I would like to know, is whether there a way
to reference a cell number instead of hard coding the
text fragment into the formula such that I could replace
the above line with:
=COUNTIF(A1:A9,C25 &"*")

With C25 containing the actual text fragment & the
count of cells in column A that contain it are returned.

Thanks!
--

Hi Garbunkel

I'm using excel 2000 and =COUNTIF(A1:A9,C25 &"*") works for me, the problem may well be with the format of the data