=COUNTA(Range)

would skip empty cells but will include a cell with ="".
luvthavodka wrote:
I need to count how many cells in a column contain anything, hence not
counting blank ones.

=COUNTIF(range,criteria)

what would the criteria be?

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[1] The SumProduct function should implicitly coerce the truth values to
their Excel numeric equivalents.
[2] The lookup functions should have an optional argument for the return
value, defaulting to #N/A in its absence.