=COUNTIF(K$1:K$144,"*"&$A148&"*")

There's nothing wrong with that formula so something else is causing it to
fail. There may be leading/trailing spaces in cell A148: _acct mgt_

See if this makes a difference:

=COUNTIF(K$1:K$144,"*"&TRIM($A148)&"*")

--
Biff
Microsoft Excel MVP


"Jay" wrote in message
...
I want to count incidences of a text snippet w/in longer strings in a
column
of cells. I have tried =COUNTIF(K$1:K$144,"*"&$A148&"*"), where cell A148
contains the text (e.g., A148 = acct mgt) to be counted, but this misses
many
occurrences. The formula works fine when I type in the text to be counted
(e.g., COUNTIF(K$1:K$144,"*acct mgt*"), but this does not permit fast
replication of the formula for different text searches. The problem seems
to
be that the formula does not allow the double quotes (") on the start and
end
of the search criteria. How can I set up the formula to search for text
referenced in another cell? Thx, J