Ideas for numbers or text in range of cells

So you're doing a couple of things that are each not too hard, but when you try to jam them both into one cell, you've got a mess.

A1 = COUNTIF(B1:I1, 3) will count HOW MANY cells contain the value 3.
A2 = COUNTIF(B2:I2, "MAX") will count HOW MANY cells contain the text string "MAX".

A1 = INDEX(3, B1:I1, 0) will return the element number (1, 2, 3, etc) inside the array B1:I1 of the FIRST cell that contains the value 3.
A2 = INDEX("MAX", B2:I2, 0) will return the element number (1, 2, 3, etc) inside the array B1:I1 of the FIRST cell that contains the text "MAX".

But... if you want to test every cell, I think the only way you can do it is, with a brute force stack of IFs reading along the row.

A1 = IF(B2=3, column(b2)-1, "") & IF(C2=3, column(c2)-1,"") & etc

Anyway I'd create a helper column (in J:J for example) so that you can test IF(B2= J2) & etc; then you can just pull down the A column rather than retyping it a bunch. And fill in J:J with "3", "MAX", etc.

EDIT:
Oh yeah and the "" getting stuck on there forces it to a text string, wrap in with value like VALUE(IF&IF&etc) to force it back to a number if you need to feed it into some kinda function in another program.