In addition.......if you really want the cell to be red use Conditional
Formatting to color it red after you enter Biff's "A" for absence.


Gord Dibben MS Excel MVP

On Wed, 23 May 2007 14:11:20 -0400, "T. Valko" wrote:

Trust me on this!

It would be easier to denote an absence with an "A" and then count the As as
opposed to counting RED cells.

=COUNTIF(A1:A10,"A")

Biff

"sunshine19992" wrote in message
...
For example, IF the cell $C$9 has a background color of RED then I want to
display 1 in this cell ($D$9). Once this is completed I am tallying up
everything in column D to find out how many times that happened.

(FTI - reason for this is that RED shows an absence and we need to
calculate
how many absenses)