How to give text a numerical value so to speak...?

Hello everyone, I'm new to the message board and just wanted to say thank god boards like this exist! Anyhow I was wondering if those of you proficient in Excel could help out a newbie with a question. I was wondering if it could be possible to make certain text objects in Excel display a numeric value. Basically whatI'm doing just to give you an idea is I have a list and in that list some colums display the word "closed" or "open." I use this to depict whether or not I have finished each specific task in the list. Well in the top of the Excel document I have something like "how many tasks are still open? 15" and "how many tasks are still closed? 20." So what I'm trying to do is when I change the status of a task to open or closed it automatically reflects the number at the top under "how many tasks open/closed." I hope that makes sense to everyone, if not please advise and I will definitely clear it up some more.

How can I go about giving these objects values so that they automatically appear at the top of the document and reflect the information I'm requiring. Thank you very much!

Hey thank you very much and everything. I was wondering how I could make a cell add up all the "closed" and "open". For example total open: "value". Total closed: "closed". I tried using the same count if code but adding both words open and closed but it wouldn't work. Hopefully you understand what I'm asking. Thanks again the code worked like a charm. It's crazy all the things excel can do.

Btw I used marcols suggestion, I didn't try the range variable.