I agree with your judgement on this. I was using an additional column with
len(a1) in the column. I was then using countif to count how many items in
this additional column were greater than zero.

Rick's single equation is a whole lot easier.

and by the way thanks to everyone who took the time to help me out on a
Sunday.
--
jake


"T. Valko" wrote:

Yes, that formula works on TEXT only.

In general, wildcards work on text only.

If you will have mixed data types then I would use Rick's suggestion:

=SUMPRODUCT(--(A1:A10<""))

--
Biff
Microsoft Excel MVP


"Jakobshavn Isbrae" wrote in
message ...
Thank you very much for taking the time to offer help. The formula seems
to
ignore numbers.
--
jake


"T. Valko" wrote:

Try this:

=COUNTIF(A1:A10,"?*")

--
Biff
Microsoft Excel MVP


"Rick Rothstein (MVP - VB)" wrote
in
message ...
I put this formula in A1...

=IF(MOD(ROW(A1),3),"X","")

and copied it down to A10. On my copy of XL2003, your formula, as well
as
the other formulas that were posted (except for mine, of course<g),
returns 10 instead of 7 meaning it counted the blank (looking) cells as
well as the non-blank looking ones.

Rick


"Pete_UK" wrote in message
...
Try using COUNTIF, i.e.:

=COUNTIF(A:A,"<")

will count everything in column A which is not blank (or appears to be
blank, like a formula returning "")

Hope this helps.

Pete

On Jun 22, 4:16 pm, Jakobshavn Isbrae
wrote:
How can I count the number of items in a column whose length exceeds
zero?
--
jake