Unfortunately, not all the values are four characters. Like the suggestion
though!
Thanks for the info.

"Ron Rosenfeld" wrote:

On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:20:01 -0700, cjlatta
wrote:

(Using Excel2003/WinXP) I am trying to count the number of times 2 values
are in a cell. The string may contain the values ",abcd, abcf," or ",abcf,
abcd," The other part that's stumping me is the string could be ",abcd,
abcf, abcg," (or longer). I am wanting to know the number of times the cell
contains "abcd" and "abcf" no matter what order it's in. I will try to show
an example below:

Values
1,abcd,
2 ,abcd, abcf,
3 ,abcd, abcf, abcg,
4 ,abcd, abcg,
5 ,abcf, abcd,

I would want to include cell 2, cell 3, and cell 5 in my count, but not 1 or
4. Can I do this?
Any help greatly appreciated.

If all the values are four characters, and/or there is no chance the string
being searched for could be found within another string (e.g. if 3, tabcdx, yz,
abcf is not a possibility) then:

=SUMPRODUCT(--ISNUMBER(SEARCH({"*abcd*abcf","*abcf*abcd"},A1:A5) ))
--ron