The COUNTIF Function should be used for that.

When using the Countif:

Countif(Select all the cells you want to review, What is the criteria you
want to count, e.g: "e*")


Hope this helps,

Vicente
"tagout" wrote:

What is the formula to count the number of cells that start with a particular
character? What I really want to do is count how the number of cells in a
column that start with a through e. I have tried several things but can't
quite come up with the magic formula. thanks for your help.