How to Count Cells with COUNTA | How to become an Expert of MS Excel - Class 6 PDF Download

Introduction

Our example

• We're going to use COUNTA to see how many people have responded. In cell F2, type an equals sign (=), followed by COUNTA:
  =COUNTA

• As with any function, the arguments will need to go in parentheses. In this case, we only need one argument: the range of cells we want COUNTA to look at. Our responses are in cells C2:C86, but we can actually include a few extra rows in case we decide to invite more people:
  =COUNTA(C2:C100)

When you press Enter, you'll see that we've received 55 responses. Here's the best part: We can continue to update this spreadsheet as we receive responses, and our function will automatically recalculate to give us the correct answer. Try entering Yes or No into some of the empty cells in column C, and you should see the value in cell F2 change.

Counting invitees

• We can also use COUNTA to calculate the total number of people that were invited. In cell F3, type the following function and press Enter:
  =COUNTA(A2:A100)
• All we had to do was type a different range (A2:A100), and it counts all of the first names, giving us an answer of 85. If you type more names at the bottom of the spreadsheet, Excel will automatically recalculate this value. However, if you type anything below row 100, you'll need to update your ranges so any new people are included.

Bonus question!

Remember to use cell references; we want the formula to recalculate whenever we update the spreadsheet.