Help with CountA

[kufta4]

I have a column of cells that are being imported from another worksheet. Showing in the cells I want to count are

-

and

***********

I want to count how many *********** there are in the column but I can't seem to get it to work. Is it because the cell isn't actually *********** but is a formula (from the other worksheet) instead?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

[Pete_UK]

Click on a cell containing those ***************** and look in the formula bar to see what it actually contains.

Hope this helps.

Pete

[kufta4]

That is what it actually contains. Its a bunch of asterisks. 11 to be exact. I want to count how many cells contain the asterisks as opposed to the "-".

[Pete_UK]

The asterisk is a wildcard character, but you can count the cells which begin with an asterisk like this:

=COUNTIF(A:A,"~**")

the tilde symbol, "~", means to treat the next character as a literal, so the cell must start with an asterisk to be counted.

Hope this helps.

Pete

[Tony Valko]

Another way...

=SUMPRODUCT(--(A1:A10="***********"))

Or, maybe this one...

=SUMPRODUCT(--(LEFT(A1:A10)="*"))

[kufta4]

The asterisk is a wildcard character, but you can count the cells which begin with an asterisk like this:

=COUNTIF(A:A,"~**")

the tilde symbol, "~", means to treat the next character as a literal, so the cell must start with an asterisk to be counted.

Hope this helps.

Pete

Thanks a lot. It worked. Wasn't aware it was a wildcard character. Thanks to the sumproduct reply too.

[Tony Valko]

You're welcome!