I am trying to use letters to represnt obtaining an item. What I would like
to do is have X=1, and use the 1 in a calculation; ie. 7 X's = 7. The only
formulas I can find make numbers represent letters, so I figure I have to
make my own, but I don't know how.

Hi Ben,

Perhaps COUNTIF. Will return the number X's in range F1:F14

=COUNTIF(F1:F14,"X")

HTH
Regards,
Howard

"Ben Z." <Ben wrote in message
...
I am trying to use letters to represnt obtaining an item. What I would like
to do is have X=1, and use the 1 in a calculation; ie. 7 X's = 7. The only
formulas I can find make numbers represent letters, so I figure I have to
make my own, but I don't know how.

Do you mean that if a cells hold X like in

A
B
X
X
B
C
X

then you want to be able to sum that up as 3?

=COUNTIF(A1:A7,"X")*1

if not post back


--

Regards,

Peo Sjoblom

http://nwexcelsolutions.com






"Ben Z." <Ben wrote in message
...
I am trying to use letters to represnt obtaining an item. What I would like
to do is have X=1, and use the 1 in a calculation; ie. 7 X's = 7. The only
formulas I can find make numbers represent letters, so I figure I have to
make my own, but I don't know how.

if you just want to count the number of characters in a cell
=len(a1)

--
Don Guillett
SalesAid Software

"Ben Z." <Ben wrote in message
...
I am trying to use letters to represnt obtaining an item. What I would like
to do is have X=1, and use the 1 in a calculation; ie. 7 X's = 7. The only
formulas I can find make numbers represent letters, so I figure I have to
make my own, but I don't know how.

Hi Ben,

I suspect that the "countif" answers already given will have given you
a way to solve your problem but...
Another option (which will be helpful if you have more letters to match
with a number than just x=1) involves the use of a lookup table eg,

1) Create a new worksheet & call it Lookup Table.
2) Put the alphabet in column A, one letter per cell ie cell A1=a,
A2=b,...,A26=z.
3) Put the number you want to match with each letter in column B eg
cell A24=x & B24 will =1.
4) Adapt this formula to be used on your working sheet:
"=VLOOKUP(A1,'Lookup Table'!$A$1:$B$26,2,FALSE)"
where the cell A1 contains the letter that you want to represent a
number.

hth
Rob Brockett
NZ
Always learning & the best way to learn is to experience...


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