Imagine you have an unsorted list of entries that might include, for example, a few months’ sales figures, and you want to find out how often a specific item has been sold. Instead of manually sorting through the list, use the COUNTIF function. The function ensures that cells with a certain value are counted.
In Excel, COUNTIF is a statistical function. As the application examples show, the function is used to create statistics. For example, by finding out how often item XY is sold, it’s easy to tell which items are the most popular. The statistical data can then be used to create visual components such as diagrams and graphs.
The COUNTIF function in Excel is basically a combination of the IF function and the COUNT function or the COUNTA function (statistical function).The combination ensures that Excel only counts a cell if certain criteria are met.
Do not confuse COUNTIF with SUMIF: the similar function does not give the number of entries of a particular value and within a certain range, but rather totals the entries within a certain range. In our example below, the corresponding item was sold in larger quantities for each sales promotion. SUMIF determines how many individual products were eventually sold.