Assigning a numeric value to a alpha character

I have created an Employees Absentee Grid to keep up with days missed.
I.e."V" stands for a whole vacation day missed, which equals "1" whole day
missed. And i want to assign "HD" to stand for ".5" day missed. Formula,
PLEASE???????

=if(A1="V",1,if(A1="HD",.5,0))

=Countif(A1:Z25,"V")*1 + Countif(A1:Z25,"HD")*0.5



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Regards,
Tom Ogilvy

"Johnny D" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> I have created an Employees Absentee Grid to keep up with days missed.
> I.e."V" stands for a whole vacation day missed, which equals "1" whole day
> missed. And i want to assign "HD" to stand for ".5" day missed. Formula,
> PLEASE???????