"ShaneDevenshire" wrote

I like COUNTIF but don't include the ' in front of the sheet name.

I guess that's an obvious missprint deserving no comments :-)

=SUMPRODUCT(N(LEFT(D)="a"))

The subtle difference is that the SUMPRODUCT formula is about 12 times slower than the COUNTIF one in 5000 cells ;-)

=SUM(N(LEFT(D)="a")) entered as an array

This one is even slower than SUMPRODUCT, although the gap is far less significant

Also, although it is in vogue to
use -- to convert TRUE,FALSE to 1,0 N is shorter in this case.

It is shorter to write, but seems to be slightly slower to calculate (according to C.Williams' plug-in)

Regards,
KL