Thermometer wrote:
But then how would I expand that to count all the occurrances of BL in
a column, such as c20:c:500 ?? Sorry, I should have explaned my
problem further. One cell was not a good example. Tha's where the
COUNTIF comes in, I think.

=COUNTIF(C20:C500,*BL*) or, if C20 contains BLAH

=COUNTIF(C20:C500,"*"&LEFT(C20,2)&"*")

Alan Beban