Formula Friday- Counting Names In A Contiguous Data Range


Friday again Excellers, and today we are going use the COUNTIF function and get Excel to automatically to check how many classes students have signed up for …or….simply ..count how many times a person’s name appears in a data range.

I have my weekly classes information.  You can see my sheet below.  The students need to sign up for one class in each module.  Slots are limited and the students need to insert their name in the class slots.  The classes are in a contiguous range of data.

contiguous data range

So, as well as wanting to know how many classes each student has signed up for, I want the number of classes to also automatically change as their name is added or taken away from any class.

The syntax of the COUNTIF function is

=COUNTIF(range, criteria)

range- this is required in the formula and is the group of cells that you want to count.  The range can contain numbers, arrays or references that contain numbers.  Blank and text values are ignored.

criteria- this is also required and can be a number, expression, cell reference or text string that determines which cells will be counted.

Let’s start the formula with the = sign and COUNTIF, then select the range of cells that are our data range in this example it is C3:F8, and the criteria is the name we want to count in the data range.

contiguous data range1

As the names are added or taken away we can tell how many classes each student has signed up for.  Easy and that.

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Barbara

Barbara is an experienced data analyst with over 20 years of experience. Author of the How To Excel At Excel Top 50 Excel tips Ebook, YouTuber and Excel Blogger.

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