There are several options, here are two simple ones:
=COUNTA(B2:B5000) will count all cells with something in them
or
=COUNTIF(B2:B5000,"X") will count all cells with an X in them

On Jan 14, 10:20*am, Rameris
wrote:
I have to keep track of people attending meetings.

The person prior to me created a spreadsheet with all the people attending
with an alpha character in each meeting they attended (an X) and nothing if
they didn't attend.

I now have to total all the meetings the people attended and do a printout
of the totals.

It would have been easy if they had used a 1 for attended and a 0 for not
attending but this spreadsheet goes back a number of years so I have to add
them manually. *

While I can add mentally the volume is crazy and I was wondering if there is
a way to have it calculate the number of "X's" in a particular range.