=COUNTIF(INDIRECT(M1&":"&N1),1)

--
HTH

Bob

(there's no email, no snail mail, but somewhere should be gmail in my addy)

"david" wrote in message
oups.com...
Can someone help please - I know Excel can do this because I have done
it before but have forgotten how (I blame my age!!)

I want to have a formula in a cell that picks up the letter part of
the cell reference from another cell.

ie I want to do a countif a cell range equals 1 where the column
letter of the start of the cell range and the end of the cell range
come from two separate cells.

This is so I can modify just those two cells and automatically update
all the formulae in the worksheet.

I am working with both Excel 2000 & 2003


Thanks

David