Assuming the cells are empty or non empty (no formulas, no "blank" spaces)
you can use

=COUNTA(Range)


will count all non blank cells

If you only want to count text

=SUMPRODUCT(--(ISTEXT(Range)))


Regards,

Peo Sjoblom

"sbrimley" wrote:

I have a student list that is constantly being added to throughout the year
and I need a formula that would count the number of students on the whole
excel sheet without having to scroll down to see how many rows there are. I
have used the count row function but I don't particularly care for it in this
file. I have been playing around with the different count functions but I
have not found one that works. Is there a function that counts non blank
cells?
Any suggestions
Excel 2002
A1:5000
first name

Thanks Suzanne