Haven't seen the previous threads but if you use countif you can use
wildcards

=COUNTIF(A2:A100,"*seneca*")

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Regards,

Peo Sjoblom

Excel 95 - Excel 2007
Northwest Excel Solutions
www.nwexcelsolutions.com
"It is a good thing to follow the first law of holes;
if you are in one stop digging." Lord Healey


"steveo" wrote in message
oups.com...
Domenic, an example would be a range where two or more words are in a
cell ex. west seneca utica and the word (cell) I need to count would
only include seneca by itself, and not count cells with other words
like west attached in the same cell. any ideas? Thank you steveo