I'm trying to count specific cells in my column of text. The CountA would
work except there are some cells that I need excluded. These cells all begin
with the word "assist" so I tried the following function which isn't given my
the expected results.

=COUNTA(F7:F36)-COUNTIF(F7:F36,"assist*")

taking the small example below, I need it to calculate the answer 3 but it's
calculating 4 (4 is answer of just the COUNTA portion so I don't think it's
doing anything with my subtraction and COUNTIF portion)

MA-90
blank
MB-90
MA-90
blank
assist MB-90

This spreadsheet is a grid of sorts so I need the cells with assist to stay
in this column; otherwise, I would separate the data and count again but that
won't work in this case.

Hope this all make sense. Thanks for any assistance you can provide.
Marcia