You're welcome!

Official explanation: The COUNT function counts numeric values only. It will
ignore text values and empty/blank cells. Dates are really numeric values
that are FORMATTED to look like a date.

6/28/2006 may look like a string but it's really the numeric value 38896
(provided that it hasn't been preformatted or entered specifically as a TEXT
entry).

Biff

"TBA" wrote in message
...
ahh!, there you go, I was having a glass half empty moment, rather than
just
believing the glass was actually full!- thanks for that, all working...

"Biff" wrote:


"TBA" wrote in message
...
thanks, I thionk though that the first formula would count the comments
as
well wouldn't it?. I need a count that ignores strings and blanks but
does
count dates only?

If you think the first formula will count comments as well, the only way
to
find out would be to try the formula. Did it count comments? <g

Biff