Excel 2010 Countif problem

Do a Find - Replace All - Look for "Z", Replace with "A" or something - Excel does the Replace and gives the no. of instances replaced. Then just do an Undo, to get back the original cells

The above formula is a little complicated.  I need a formual, (replace all won't work), that I can show my coworkers.  If it's too complicated they wont' use it.  Can I add a - or / between the Z job numbers to get them to count?  For this formual simple is better.   Thank you.  

Walter

Your existing formula can still work - Just do a Text to Columns - to have the Z Jobs in individual cells - Delimiter being Comma

If you want a simple formula you need a simple data layout.

In your sample, all jobs within each cell start with Z. Will this always be the case?

If so, this simple formula in column C will tell you how many jobs are in the cell in column A:

=IF(A6="",0,(LEN(A6)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A6,",","")))+1)

You can then just SUM column C to find out how many jobs in total.

The formula is looking at the total length of the characters in the cell and then working out the length without the commas; one less the other plus 1 tells you how many entries (plus 1 because last entry doesn't have a comma after it).

Thanks
Rob H

Not quite as simple, and certainly not as easily explained to other users, you can use the following Array Formula in C3 with no need for other entries in column C:

=SUM(IF(A6:A82="",0,(LEN(A6:A82)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A6:A82,",","")))+1))

Confirm entry with Shift + Ctrl + Enter and curly brackets  {  } will appear enclosing the formula.

Thanks
Rob H

Probably simpler to use Z in the substitute function, like Rory did, then don't need the +1 at the end.

Thank you your solution worked great.