In this lesson, I’m going to be showing you how to:
- Use the COUNT and COUNTIF function to ONLY count the number of cells, which contains TEXTUAL data
- Be able to use a combination of the COUNT function to be able to count ONLY TEXT from a list or range of cells.
Download the Excel file below, and save it onto your computer. So you can complete this lesson with me.
Go ahead, open the video below and watch the tutorial at your own pace:
If I have not covered everything in this lesson, please leave a comment or your question below and I will get back to you. (you may have to scroll down past other lovely peoples comments)
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Watch this tutorial directly on our YouTube channel and Subscribe
Thanks for watching!
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When you’re ready move onto:
Lesson 9: Simple Subtraction Formula in Excel
Or go back to:
Lesson 7: Count & CountA function in Excel | Difference between Count and CountA function in Excel
Lesson 6: MIN & MAX function in Excel | Find the Minimum and Maximum value within a range in Excel
Lesson 5: Average Function in Excel | What does Average mean
Lesson 4: Multiplication Formula in Excel | Replicate or Copy Formulas in Excel
Lesson 3: Formatting Cells in Excel | Make a Spreadsheet look visually attractive
Lesson 2: SUM function in Excel | Entering Text & Numbers | FREE Series of Microsoft Excel Lessons
Lesson 1: Introduction to Microsoft Excel | Excel Interface | FREE Series of Microsoft Excel Lessons (pdf guide included)
Hope you are enjoying your learning 🙂
Habib Ali – ICT Tutor

Hi Habib,
I realised I have never used COUNTIF function. It does reduce the number of steps effectively. The excel spreadsheet is powerful if one learns the functions properly.
Thanks for sharing! Your videos makes it easy to digest the materials.
Cheers.
SAM
Thanks Sam for your feedback. Yes, COUNTIF function is an amazing function in Excel. I hope my Excel tutorials are helping you learn new functions.
Wishing you all the best
Habib (ICT Tutor)
Hi,
I found this lesson very interesting. It was really well explained and broken down in way so it was easy to understand.
I look forward to your tutorials, and enjoy how they are presented. Spent many years with Excel, so it’s always good to brush up on my skills.
Great work!
All the best
Adam
Hi Adam,
I’m glad to hear you are still finding my lessons useful even if you are expert in Excel yourself. Thank you for your feedback on my style of teaching.
Best wishes
Habib (ICT Tutor)
I’m following your lessons with great interest as I’ve never really understood many of the functions in Excel. I’ll definitely need to watch this video on count and count if functions several more times to fully understand. I’m also going to try it for myself as this always helps! Your teaching is very clear and easy to follow:)
Hi Kathy,
Many thanks for your lovely feedback. It’s very much appreciated. 🙂
Yes definitely! You can continue to watch more of my lessons on my YouTube channel.
All the best
Habib (ICT Tutor)
Hi Habib,
Thanks for this tutorial of “count,” “counta” and “countif” I love how convenient it is to calculate the cells’ information and mix-match them for a better data report. It’s good to learn only to count textual data from an excel sheet. Thanks a lot.
Matt
This is great to know Matt. I will be doing many more lessons on lots of others areas of the Microsoft programs. So watched out that those.
Best Regards
Habib (ICT Tutor)
I have learned a lot in your lessons Habib and I’m grateful to have landed here. All these functions you have taught form Lesson one to 8 effortlessly made me understand excel way better than when I first learned excel. Your explanations were very simple and easy to comprehend. I hope Excel beginners will find your page.
Regards,
Janet.
Thank you for you encouraging feedback.
It’s amazing to know you found my teaching style helpful.
Habib (ICT Tutor)
Thanks for helping people to understand how to use the count and countif function. This is so helpful!
Many thanks for your lovely feedback. It’s much appreciated.
Best Wishes
Habib (ICT Tutor)
Hey Habib,
I am going to share these articles with some of my colleagues, as they need to learn more about excel than I do. Especially these COUNTIF functions, as they would really help with our delay minute statistics in our engineering department at TfL.
I will let you know how they get on with these functions and if they need any further help, then I will get in touch with you. Is that OK with you?
Thank you for sharing and keep up the great work.
All the best,
Tom
This is absolutely fine by me. Thank you for spreading the knowledge.
Best wishes
Habib (ICT Tutor)
Another excellent tutorial Habib. keep up the excellent work. No doubt with job losses increasing, people will need to start learning online/computer skills and you are the man to help!
Hi Russ,
This was one of the reasons I turned to creating Video tutorials to help support those who need to level up their skills in the job search.
Many thanks for the support.
Habib (ICT Tutor)
Hi Habib
I recently started making concerted efforts to learn and relearn Excel functions as I would like to use VBA to test trading methods on historical stock data. In starting to think through the processes I will need to program to produce reports I see how COUNTA COUNT and COUNTIF functions could be useful. I am reminded how much easier it is to learn something when you have an actual practical problem to solve and what you learn can be applied to it. Thanks for a great lesson.
Best regards
Andy
You’re very welcome Andy and good luck with your project.
Habib (ICT tutor)
That is really cool to know. I used countif all the time but never with the “*” as a wild card. I also never used counta using the “-” sign and count together like you did. Wow, these little tricks will go along way in trying to display the data the way I want to. Thanks so much for sharing this valuable information.
Hi Rick,
I’m glad to hear you are learning new tips and tricks of Microsoft Excel through my tutorials. I want to spread the knowledge in the best and simple possible way.
Many thanks for your feedback.
Habib (ICT Tutor)
Cool tutorial there. I must admit I’m pretty hopeless with using formulas in Excel. Thanks for the tips.
Thank you for your feedback.
Best wishes
Habib (ICT Tutor)
With all your tutorials, I am fast realizing just how ignorant I am in Excel. Thanks, Habib, good learning.
Regards,
Aparna Bansal
Many thanks for your feedback Aparna.
Best wishes
Habib (ICT Tutor)
Habib,
Using the COUNT and COUNTIF functions in Excel to count only cells with text are very convenient functions to utilize. I appreciate you showing us different strategies to use (including the “hack” in today’s lesson) as I feel that enhances our learning experiences even more.
Thank you for another great lesson.
You’re very welcome Michael 😃
Habib (ICT tutor)
Thanks for another comprehensive tutorial. You really make my work so much easier. You seem to know everything about Excel. How many years of experience do you have and what methods did you use to learn?
I am a graduate in the ICT field and have been teaching for about 17 years now. Absolutely love the profession.
Habib (ICT tutor)
Hi Habib!
This lesson Using the COUNT and COUNTIF function to count ONLY the cells, which contains TEXTUAL data was very useful, I remembered a case where it would come in handy if I knew how to use it at the time.
While watching and listening to the video, I opened the excel document and followed the instructions, and this magic of excel sometimes still impresses me very much. If you know how to use the functions, you can be a real wizard, and the work is made much easier and faster.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge!
Friendly greetings,
Nina
Yes Nina – you can never know enough of Excel, it truly is a very remarkable software.
Habib (ICT tutor)
Hi Habib,
Thanks so much for all your free training on using Excel.
I thought I had a good handle on using this, but I’ve been learning new ways to make my work easier.
It’s amazing how many functions there are, lol.
Cheers,
Suzanne
You’re welcome Suzanne. Many people don’t realise what I am giving here. Others charge thousands of pounds for such series of lessons, but I’m giving it all for free, as I want everyone to be in education, especially in this crisis with the Covid 19.
The functions are very large in numbers and they are absolutely great.
Habib (ICT Tutor)
Hi Habib
Good, thank you for the clear explanation of these functions.
This was a clever one wasn’t it Peter? But please focus on fully understanding each lesson before moving onto the next lesson, and complete each lesson in order.
Habib (ICT Tutor)
Great and very detailed information. Thanks for sharing.
You are welcome. Thank you for your useful feedback.
Best wishes
Habib (ICT tutor)
I find it really cool as to what you can do within excel. Functions like these can be really helpful within the correct situation and can save a lot of time.
Another tool in my excel toolbelt.
Thank you for sharing!
-Joseph
Hi,
That’s great to know! Looking forward to seeing you more at my tutorials on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBfGJLMmTIA3ESh9DFYWLIg
Best wishes
Habib (ICT tutor)
Thanks for this tutorial.
I use excel but didn’t know about the existence of this option in the count function.
I learned something new today.
Your are not alone – many people don’t know this one. It’s a lovely combination of the count function.
Habib (ICT Tutor)
I used to work with excel a lot over ten years ago, and I loved it. I lost some practice, though, and this is why your courses are so great to freshen up on Excel again 🙂
Thank you for this great lesson!
Hi,
Thank you for your lovely comments and feedback. It’s great to know my tutorials will be useful for you.
All the best
Habib (ICT tutor)
Thanks for another easy to follow excel tutorial. I really encourage you to make more of them.
Thank you for you feedback. I surly will! 🙂
Habib
Thanks for this tutorial…I’m so not comfortable using Exel, but I learned a lot. I always resort to my husband who’s an Excel wiz to create my spreadsheets if needed. Now I’m more at ease working with Excel. Thanks for your lessons!
You’re welcome Dana. Bookmark my site, and complete all the lessons, starting from lesson 1 and you will never need to ask your husband about excel anymore. I have made these tutorials so easy to understand. The functions have been explained thoroughly. Take care
Thank you for sharing with us this information. I will save for future reference in my new office position.
Thank you for your feedback. I hope it will be useful for you in the future.
Best Regards
This is really amazing how you can count the test in a list, I am more and more amazed with every post I read from your website.
Thank you for sharing
Jeff
Hi Jeff,
Thank you for making the time to visit our site at https://lifestyletipsandhacks.com/ and posting us a comment. We really appreciate it.
Best Regrads
Habib
Thanks for sharing the mystery of counting text using just the Count function – a clever trick to deduct the numbers. Thanks for sharing your other Excel lessons too.
Hi Simon,
You are welcome.
I’m glad this tutorial was useful for you. Please keep visiting our site at https://lifestyletipsandhacks.com/ for more useful contents like these.
Thank you
Best wishes
Habib
Thanks for sharing us on how to use the counting text function in excel. Especially when we create a sheet with many rows, we will need to use this function to manage our information sheet. Thanks again
Hi Gary,
Thank you for you feedback. I’m please to know that this tutorial will be useful for you.
Kind Regards
Habib