Hopefully....

I want to select a long column of cells some containing text data and return the number of cells that contain any text (ie non-blank)

Cheers....

Alan

If you activate the count function (i think its an option in the view menu maybe) then highlight the cells, there will be the total in a box at the very bottom of the window will be something like count: 20. You can change what it counts somehow, but its a long time since i used it.

Lots of ways

If it is simply a count then at the bottom of the sheet below the tabs etc right click. This should pop up a window with average, count,sum etc. Set to count and then drag highlight the selected range and it will give you the total count of cells that are not empty.

- Jim

Ah yeah......that helps...I think I'm getting there....

Cheers

Got it cheers everyone...

I used function COUNTIF range being my column in question and the criteria being * i.e containing anything.

Again thanks for the help.

Alan

As above, lots of ways, countif() being one of them but you need to consider what to lookfor...

Pivot tables are your friend when counting things, they will even work on only one column, it does need a title.

Data> pivot table follow the prompts, when you get to layout simply drag the column to be counted in the row area, and drag the same column into the data area, it will now count the variables.

Regards Mark

There is a COUNTBLANK(range) function which returns the number of blank cells in the range, so subtract that from the number of cells in the range to give you your number.

COUNTA is the function you require. It counts only cells which contain data.