I need to count the number of cells that have alphanumeric characters entered

I have ten cells (two columns of five rows a piece) designated to display bar codes that have been scanned into the spreadsheet. We do not always enter bar codes into all ten cells. I want to place a formula in another cell which will count how many of the cells designated for barcode entry have actually have data. For example, if I have entered a barcode into seven of the cells, I want my "sum/counter" cell to show 7. If I have five cells with a barcode entered, I want the counter to show 5. Depending on how big the document ends up being, I may cram more cells into my two column array, so I'd want my counting formula to be expandable if the array got bigger.

I have seen the COUNT function, but it doesn't seem to work if the data in a cell has numbers and letters. Thanks for your help.

Hi,

You should be able to use COUNTA, which counts the number of non-empty cells in a range. e.g. =COUNTA(A1:B5)

If you Name the range then use that in the formula - e.g. =COUNTA(ScannedBarCodes) - then if you expand the range, you can just expand the range referred to by the Named Range. Look up Named Ranges in Excel help (or Google it) for more info on them.

Hope that helps.

Regards,
Aardigspook

If your problem is solved, please go to 'Thread Tools' above your first post and 'Mark Thread as Solved'.
You don't need to give me rep if I helped, but thanks are appreciated.

That works. Thanks very much

You're welcome.

Regards,
Aardigspook

If your problem is solved, please go to 'Thread Tools' above your first post and 'Mark Thread as Solved'.
You don't need to give me rep if I helped, but thanks are appreciated.