How COUNTA deals with blanks and arrays

Hi, I have attached a workbook with a few examples which I hope will show the problem,

my starting point i s;

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but if a #NA i returned I get a count of 1 , so I put in if na = "" , still a count of 1, so I tried ;

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which works for a false but true = a spilled count so eg 20 for each value of the array ?

in the finished example i have a vstack which seems to get rid of the problem, but I might not want that so is there a way around this.
I have included several example if more need let me know.

Richard.

Please refer to other methods
Cell H4 formula

Formula:

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OR office 365

Formula:

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Thank you both I have not properly gone through both just yet,
but did come up with this; which sort of avoids the counting problem by using the ifna at the end and is at first glance similar to aligw, I think?

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updated file attached.

Richard.

@Dicken You're Welcome. Glad to help . Thank You for the feedback and rep.