COUNTIF giving wrong results

[Excel_vba]

I have the following formula in D2: =COUNTIF(B2:B15732,C2)

In cell C2 I am referencing the word "Hardware" which occurs 43 times in column B when I do Ctrl + F. However, the COUNTIF function is returning 1 instead of 43. What could be wrong with this? There are multiple occurrences of "Hardware" not just one.

[daddylonglegs]

The cells have to contain exactly "hardware" - if you have leading or trailing spaces those won't be counted - what do you get with this version?

=COUNTIF(B2:B15732,"*"&C2&"*")

[daffodil11]

Is the word Hardware appearing by itself? If there is a space before or after it, Countif will not find it unless you use a wildcard value such as:

=COUNTIF(B2:B15732,"*hardware*") to check for any strings ending or beginning with your reference. =Trim() can help with this.

[Excel_vba]

The cells have to contain exactly "hardware" - if you have leading or trailing spaces those won't be counted - what do you get with this version?

=COUNTIF(B2:B15732,"*"&C2&"*")

I considered that but I didn't think it would work because I was used to using the text box in the AutoFilter. I tried your suggestion and it worked. Thank you also to Daffodil.