Displaying a Count of Zeros on the Status Bar

Jeremy's company is often interested in how many cells contain the value zero. He wonders if there is a way to customize the status bar to automatically display the COUNTIF formula. He knows he can see the results of functions such as AVERAGE, COUNT, SUM and others, but can't find a way to do a more complex COUNTIF display.

Unfortunately there is no way to modify the default functions available on the status bar. There are, however, some workarounds that you can consider. The obvious is to use a formula in a cell to evaluate the number of zeros in a range:

=COUNTIF(A1:E52,0)

You could also select the desired range and use the Find tool (Ctrl+F) to search for the number 0. If you click on Find All, the dialog box reports the number of occurrences in the selected range—the number of zeros.

If you prefer, you can create a short macro that will do the calculation and display it on the status bar. The following example is run every time the selection is changed in the worksheet.

Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range)
    zCount = Application.WorksheetFunction.CountIf(Target.Cells,0)
    Application.StatusBar = "Selection has " & CStr(zCount) & " zeros"
End Sub

All you need to do is make sure that you place this code within the code module for the worksheet you want affected. (Just right-click the worksheet’s tab and choose View Code from the resulting Context menu. That’s where the code should be placed.)