Although we are often required to sum up values there are occasions when we need to

count them. Excel offers a range of count functions that can help with this. Uma
has been asked by the sales team to manage their large data set. To begin with,
they need to know how many of the orders have been shipped. For this we can use the
Count function. Before we enter our formula, though, notice that we will be working
with large ranges that will be slow to select. So let's apply what we learned last
week and name our ranges. To do this click somewhere within the dataset and press
control A to select all of the data. Go to the formulas tab and click on Create
from selection. Remember, the keyboard shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + F3 as well. Uncheck
left column if it's already been checked for you so that you only have top row
checked and click on OK. Let's go to the name box to check that our ranges are
properly named. Great. Now let's work out how many orders have been shipped. So we
need Excel to count each cell in Column O that has a number in it and that is
exactly what the count function does. Click in cell O3 and type equals C-O-U and
you'll notice that there are quite a few count functions that Excel offers. We just
want the first one in the list for now. So tab to select count and the count
function will count all the cells that contain a numeric value. Any empty cells
will be ignored. So now we need to select all the shipping dates. Without named
ranges we would have had to select all this data manually. But now we just need to
type a few letters. S-H-I. And shipping date is the first one in the list, so tab
and enter. 1037 orders have been shipped. Great. Next we need to work out the total
number of orders placed. So we click in cell B3 and type equals count open brackets
and specify the range order number, O-R-D, arrow down, tab to select order number
and enter and the number of orders is zero. That can't be right. Well, remember the
count function counts the number of cells that contain numeric values. Because of
the hyphen or the dash in column A, these values are not numeric. So instead we
need to use another function. COUNTA. This function counts all non-empty cells,
both numerical and alphanumerical data. Let's edit the formula and use COUNTA
instead. 1039 orders have been placed. Great. Finally, it appears that the account
managers are sometimes forgetting to enter the order priority. It would be good to
find out how many times this has occurred. So here we want to count the blank cells
and the function to use for this is COUNTBLANK. Click in cell J3. Type equals count
down arrow down arrow. Tab to choose COUNTBLANK. Order priority. Enter. There are
two instances where the account managers have forgotten to enter the order
priority. We have now seen how we can generate useful summaries using COUNT, COUNTA
and COUNTBLANK.