Counting empty cells to the left

I am trying to count the # of empty cells to the left
I trying to work out how many days since an employee has missed
In this worksheet, a letter is placed in the cell corresponding to the day they missed. And I need to count backwards from a date (say: July 31st) to the last day with a letter in it.

A sample file is generally helpful in these situations...

=COLUMN(Z1)-MATCH(REPT("Z",255),A1:Z1)

would for ex. return the count of blanks between Z1 and the last text entry in A1:Z1

Could you post a version with your desired output (calculated manually of course) ... based on your last file I'm not sure where you want these results to appear nor from which date the calculation is meant to be based... presumably today ?

Given the nature of your set-up and so as to reduce repetitive calcs I would be inclined to do something like:

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Then to generate results

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Re: use of REPT("Z",255) see Bob Phillips' article on finding "last values": http://www.xldynamic.com/source/xld.LastValue.html

Attachment represents that uploaded in post # 6 with addition of formulae as suggested in post # 8

The formulae in row 56 calculated YTD days at end of month based on month specified in row 29
(these formulae are necessitated by fact that Feb will vary every four years and as such so will layout of your data above).

The formula in rows 30 to 53 then use the cumulative days value in row 56 to determine the last column (B onwards) that should be included in the calculations to determine days since last absence... basic premise is also that you have done your "prior 6 month" absence count for all months - it uses that to establish as to whether or not it need locate an absence at all... ie if no absences then you know days since last absence = ytd days.

If you're failing to get the correct results I would ask that you post that specific file such that we can investigate further.