See if one of these works for you:

If you want to clean the "blank" cells, try this:
This works for me (and I don't know why)

Select the data range
EditFind
Don't enter anything in the Find What box.
Click the [Find All] button
(That should display a list of all of the cells you are interested in)
Hold down the [Ctrl] key and press the letter A
(That should select all of the matching cells)
Click the [Close] button to close the window

Press the [Delete] key to clear those cells.

OR

Otherwise, since Excel stores dates as numbers, just use the COUNT function
to count the dates.

Does either of those help?

***********
Regards,
Ron

XL2002, WinXP-Pro


"JackieD" wrote:

Here's what I'm attempting to do: For each column, X,Y, Z, I am attempting
to count nonblanks. However, the data was imported from Access and Oracle,
and Excel treats what appear to be blank cells as nonblanks. I've tested
this theory by highlighting a couple of "blank" cells and deleting them, and
my count changes. So, can I get Excel to put a value into my "blank" cells,
so then I could filter it out, or create a formula that would only count
dates in my columns (which is what I'm after).

This is what I'm looking at:

A B C
1 2/4/2006 2/6/2006 ("blank")
2 ("blank") 12/13/2005 1/7/2006
3 2/20/2006 1/15/2006 ("blank")

In each column if I use a COUNTA I'll get a total of 3, instead of 2 for A,
3 for B and 1 for C. Any ideas?