Lisa W wrote...
I am trying to find a formula that will give me a total of the cells
from certain columns in each row which contain text, for example:

I have text in some cells in columns a to f in row 1. I would like a
total to appear in g1 telling me how many cells contain text from
columns a, c & e excluding b, d & f. (The columns I want the totals
from will be consistant for each row.)
....

For relatively few nonadjacent columns, simplest to use something like

=ISTEXT(A3)+ISTEXT(C3)+ISTEXT(E3)

This would count cells evaluating as "" rather than blank as text. If
you want to count only cells containing one or more characters of text,
try

=COUNTIF(A3,"?*")+COUNTIF(C3,"?*")+COUNTIF(E3,"?*" )