countif

COUNTIF is a spreadsheet function that counts the number of cells within a range that meet a specified condition. It is available in spreadsheet programs such as Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets. The syntax is COUNTIF(range, criterion). The range must be a contiguous block of cells; the criterion defines what to count and can be a number, a text string, an expression, or a reference to a cell.

Criteria can include wildcards: an asterisk (*) matches any sequence of characters, and a question mark (?) matches a single character. They are useful for filtering textual data, for example COUNTIF(A2:A100, "Yes") counts cells equal to Yes, and COUNTIF(A2:A100, "A*") counts cells starting with the letter A. For numeric comparisons, you can include operators in quotes, such as COUNTIF(B2:B100, ">5") or COUNTIF(B2:B100, "<=" & C1) where C1 contains a threshold value.

COUNTIF is not case-sensitive: "Apple" and "apple" are counted the same. It can also count blank cells with an empty string criterion, such as COUNTIF(D2:D100, ""). For more complex criteria involving multiple conditions, COUNTIF is combined with other functions, or the dedicated COUNTIFS function is used that supports multiple criteria.

Common uses include tallying occurrences of categories, flagging data that meets thresholds, and validating inputs. COUNTIF is a fundamental tool for data analysis in spreadsheets.