In fact, there are three solutions to this problem. Fear not, this doesn’t mean Excel is not capable of performing this calculation the key is to make sure that Excel interprets your criteria as a text entry rather than a number. If you do so, Excel will return the following error: Excel error message for CountifĮxcel returns an error because it does not recognize >14 as a number. If you want to know how many employees have taken more than 14 holiday days based on the information above, you might think you could simply enter the condition >14 (greater than 14) as your criteria in the formula. Comparison operator in the criteria of Countif functionsīack to our example. However, keep in mind that that the other comparison operators can also be used. Since the default operator for the Countif function is equals, its very important that the comparison operators other than the equal to be enclosed in double quotes.įor simplicity purposes, we will focus only on the Countif function in combination with the greater than operator (>) to explain the concept of using comparison operators. In the table below are comparison operators you might want to use with Countif. However, you can use other comparison operators in your Countif criteria. So, if you don’t instruct Excel otherwise, it will look for an exact match. The default comparison operator used by Excel to assess the criteria in a Countif function is the equals sign (=). Criteria, determines which cells will be countedĪ comparison operator, as the name suggests, carries out a comparison between two values.Range, specifies the cells to be included in the analysis and criteria determines which cells will be counted.Let’s take a closer look at the ingredients you’ll need to find that answer: The syntax of the Countif function is as follows: Excel Countif exampleġ4 is simply entered as the criteria in the Countif function.īut what if you don’t want to know how many employees have taken exactly 14 holiday days, and instead are more interested in the number of employees who have taken 14 or more holiday days? Consider the example below where the number of employees who have taken exactly 14 days holiday are counted. In Excel, the Countif function is used to count how many cells in a range are an exact match to a specific value.