How to count occurrence of items occurring both singly or in a string within a cell

Hi
I am using excel (2003) to record some data which is shown either as a single variable in a cell (A or 1 for example) or as a string in a cell (A B C or 1 2 3 for example).
I want to be able to count how many of each variable occur in a column, but am unsure how to do it. I can count it in a possible string, using the criterion: "*A*" or on its own: "A", but can't make it work when it could be either part of a string or just a single letter or number in the cell.
I hope this makes sense. Sure there must be a simple answer!
Thanks

Hi,

If you only have a single occurance of the character you wish to check for in any given cellm then =COUNTIF(A2:A7,"A*") should work. However, if there is any cell that contains more than one occurance of the character, this array may work for you

=SUM(LEN(A2:A7)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A2:A7,"A","")))

confirm with CTRL, SHIFT and ENTER.

OK,

So this should do it,

=COUNTIF(A1:A12,"*1*")+COUNTIF(A1:A12,1)

=SUMPRODUCT(--ISNUMBER(SEARCH("1",A1:A10)))
=SUMPRODUCT(--ISNUMBER(SEARCH("b",A1:A10)))