Statistical Functions
Beginner
COUNTA Function
How many replied, regardless of what they said.
Task:
You sent five invitations and need the response rate. Put the number of people who replied at all in B7 — what they actually answered does not matter yet.
Learning Objectives:
- Count non-empty cells with COUNTA
- See why COUNT returns zero on text
- Measure a response rate
Hints
Solve without hints for +5 XP
The data in this exercise
This is the grid you start with. Cell references in the task — B6, C2 — point at the row numbers and column letters below.
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Invitee | Reply |
| 2 | Aday | Yes |
| 3 | Bhatt | |
| 4 | Costa | No |
| 5 | Duarte | Maybe |
| 6 | Ekwueme | |
| 7 | Replies received |
What this exercise teaches (contains the answer)
Every reply in this column is a word, so COUNT returns 0 where COUNTA returns 3. That is the entire distinction between them, and it is the one that bites: point COUNT at a column of text and you get a confident zero rather than an error, which is a far harder mistake to spot.