How to Count Cells with Text in Excel? 3 Different Use Cases
(Note: This guide on how to count cells with text in Excel is suitable for all Excel versions including Office 365)
Excel deals with a variety of data of diverse data types. Excel can accept data in the form of numbers, text, characters, and operators. When storing large amounts of data, sorting and retrieving one particular type of data can be quite difficult.
In a spreadsheet consisting of different data types, you might sometimes have to pinpoint the cells with text and count them to perform any function or operation.
In this article, I will tell you how to count cells with text in Excel along with their use cases.
You’ll Learn:
Watch our video on how to count cells with text in Excel
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What Is Count in Excel?
Before we learn how to count cells with text in Excel, let us refresh the concept of COUNT in Excel. Let us see what COUNT is and how Excel counts the values.
Counting is one of the most commonly used functions in Excel which provides a numerical summary of the total values which might be useful in a variety of places. In simpler terms, Excel counts how many times a value appears in a column or row.
In Excel, you can count the number of cells or the values it houses by using functions. Excel has a variety of functions that help in counting. Functions like COUNT and COUNTA are used to count all the cells in a particular range or select cells which house a particular value. On the other hand, COUNTIF and COUNTIFS functions count cells only if they satisfy a particular value.
In the case where we want to count the number of cells with text in Excel, the function COUNTIF/COUNTIFS is the best choice. Using these functions, you can set criteria to the function so it counts only the cells which house the text values in the cell.
How to Count Cells with Text in Excel?
Texts are also called strings in Excel. When it comes to technological terms, strings are a block of text which might contain any identifying values. They can be individual values like name or address, or they can be a variable that points to another constant.
In Excel, they are usually written with alphanumeric characters which are enclosed by double quotation marks or can be written with an apostrophe. Additionally, they can be a result of logical functions like TRUE or FALSE, or may even be special characters like !, @, #, and $.
Count All the Text Values
To count all the text values in the given Excel sheet, you can use the COUNTIF function along with a wildcard character. This function with a wildcard counts all the text values in a given range.
To count the cells with text in Excel, choose a destination cell and enter the formula =COUNTIF(range,criteria). Here, the range denotes the array of cells within which you want the function to act. The criteria variable denotes the condition to satisfy when counting the values.
Consider the below given example. To find the cells with text values in a given range, enter the formula =COUNTIF(A3:A10,”*”). The function COUNTIF acts on the cell range A3 to A10 and finds the text values. The * represents the wildcard element. The * symbol specifies anything other than numbers to be counted, including blank spaces and special characters. However, this method does not count logical values.
The cells with text within a given range are found to be 7. If you count the values manually, you will notice that the cells with text values are 5. But, the cells A11 and A12 also contain characters like space ( ) and apostrophe (‘) which do not show up in the cell.
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Count Cells with Text Value Without Blank Spaces
You can use the same COUNTIF function and wildcards to count the number of cells with text in them. This method only counts cells that hold any text value and does not count any blank cell in the given range.
To count the cells which have text value in them, enter the formula =COUNTIF(range,criteria) in the destination cell. This is the same as the previous case, but adding wildcard “?” together with “*” only counts the cells which have text values.
Consider the below given example. To find the cells with text values in a given range, enter the formula =COUNTIF(A3:A12,”?*”). Here, the function COUNTIF counts the number of cells in the range of cells A3 to A12. Whereas for the criteria parameter, instead of just passing “*” which counts all the cells with text values, adding the “?” wildcard to the criteria counts the cells which have at least one character.
As result, the cells which have text values are found to be 6. You can see the text values aligned to the left of the cell whereas the numerical values are aligned to the right of the cell. This function also counts the apostrophe as a text character, but it does not count the blank spaces.
Count Cells with a Particular Text Value
With the help of wildcards and the COUNTIF function, you can also count the cells with any specific text values in Excel.
Using this method, you’ll learn how to count specific words in Excel. To count the cells with the specific value, you can just enter the text to count within quotations when you pass the criteria parameter.
Let me show you an example. Suppose you want to count the occurrences of the word “two” in a range of cells. You can just enter the formula in the =COUNTIF(A3:A12,”two”) to count the occurrences of the word “two” in the given range of cells A3 to A12.
Wildcards can be used to count cells with a specific text value.
Imagine you want to count the number of cells that contain the text starting with any particular letter or character. Say, you want to count the number of cells that starts with the letter “t”, then you can use the “*” wildcard.
Consider the example, in the cell range A3 to A12 you want to count the number of cells which start with the letter “t”. Then, enter the function =COUNTIF(A3:A12,“t*”) in the destination cell.
The resultant value is 2. This denotes that when you want to find the cells which start with the letter “t”, you can enter the value “t*” in the criteria parameter. As a result, the COUNTIF function counts the cells which start with the letter “t” irrespective of the number of characters that follow them.
Another case to use the wildcard is to count any one particular value. For example, if you want to find the occurrences of a three-letter word that have the starting letter “t” and ends with “o”, you can use the “?” wildcard. As the “*” wildcard replaces any number of characters, the “?” wildcard only replaces one character.
In this case, the count function only counts the cells with three characters which start with “t” and end with “o” and counts them.
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Reminders
- Wildcards can take the place of characters and are of three types: *, ?, and ~. Use the * wildcard when you want to replace more than one character, use the ? wildcard to replace exactly one character, and ~ to replace and search for the exact character. Wildcards are not case-sensitive. Additionally, wildcards only work on text and not on numbers.
- Sometimes when a cell appears blank, it does not necessarily mean that the cell is empty. Characters like space ( ), apostrophe (‘), and double quotation marks(””) also make the cell look empty. But technically, they are considered text.
- When looking for cells with text manually, you can easily distinguish the text from the number in Excel. Numbers are aligned to the right of the cell, whereas text is aligned to the left of the cell.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I count all the cells in Excel?
To count all the cells within a particular range in Excel, you can use the COUNT function followed by the range of cells that you want to count i.e =COUNT(range).
How to count the number of blank cells in Excel?
You can use the COUNTIF or COUNTIFS function with an empty string (““) as the criteria parameter i.e =COUNTIF(range,””) to count the number of blank/empty cells. Or, you can use the =COUNTBLANK(range) function to count them.
How to count in a PivotTable?
In a PivotTable, you can automatically set a category and add fields in the Value Field Setting to count the values.
Closing Thoughts
In this article, we saw how to count cells with text in Excel. Additionally, we saw all the ways you can use the COUNTIF function to count the text values without including the blank spaces and counting cells with particular words.
If you need more high-quality Excel guides, please check out our free Excel resources center. Simon Sez IT has been teaching Excel for over ten years. For a low, monthly fee you can get access to 130+ IT training courses. Click here for advanced Excel courses with in-depth training modules.
Simon Calder
Chris “Simon” Calder was working as a Project Manager in IT for one of Los Angeles’ most prestigious cultural institutions, LACMA.He taught himself to use Microsoft Project from a giant textbook and hated every moment of it. Online learning was in its infancy then, but he spotted an opportunity and made an online MS Project course - the rest, as they say, is history!
