Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. If you are using a later version (Excel 2007 or later), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for later versions of Excel, click here: Counting Only Money Winners.

Counting Only Money Winners

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated January 4, 2020)
This tip applies to Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003


Chuck has a worksheet with prize monies to be awarded to the eighty players in his golf league. Each row represents a player, and each column represents the winners of each of the five tournaments held in the season. The sixth column contains a simple formula summing the winnings shown on each row. At the bottom of this sixth column Chuck wants to enter a function that would count the number of players actually receiving monetary awards.

There are several ways you can put together such a formula. You might be tempted to use the COUNTA function, but it won't work. The purpose of COUNTA is to count all the cells that are not empty. This means it will also count cells containing a zero value; they are not empty either.

You could use the SUMPRODUCT function in the following manner:

=SUMPRODUCT((G1:G80>0)*1)

This formula just checks if a cell is greater than zero. If it is, then the True value is multiplied by 1 resulting in a value of 1. If it is False, then the False value multiplied by 1 is 0. The sum of all these values (1 and 0) is then calculated, resulting in a count as desired.

Perhaps the easiest approach, however, is to use the COUNTIF function. This function performs a count only if a particular criterion is met:

=COUNTIF(G1:G80,">0")

In this case, the count only occurs if a cell is greater than zero.

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (2421) applies to Microsoft Excel 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Excel (Excel 2007 and later) here: Counting Only Money Winners.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

MORE FROM ALLEN

Placing Many Graphics in a Document

Word documents can contain more than just text. You can even create documents that contain almost no text at all. This ...

Discover More

Finding the Nth Root of a Number

Finding a square root is easy because Excel provides a worksheet function for that purpose. Finding a different root may ...

Discover More

Hyperlinks from Headings to the TOC

A table of contents is a great way to help organize lengthy documents. In a default TOC, you can use each entry as a ...

Discover More

Best-Selling VBA Tutorial for Beginners Take your Excel knowledge to the next level. With a little background in VBA programming, you can go well beyond basic spreadsheets and functions. Use macros to reduce errors, save time, and integrate with other Microsoft applications. Fully updated for the latest version of Office 365. Check out Microsoft 365 Excel VBA Programming For Dummies today!

More ExcelTips (menu)

Returning the Smallest Non-Zero Value

In a series of values you may need to know the smallest value that isn't a zero. There is no built-in function to do ...

Discover More

Activating the Formula Bar with the Keyboard

Hate to take your hands off the keyboard while working on a worksheet? Here's one way to activate the Formula Bar without ...

Discover More

Counting Employees in Classes

Excel is very good at counting things, even when those things need to meet specific criteria. This tip shows how you can ...

Discover More
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

View most recent newsletter.

Comments

If you would like to add an image to your comment (not an avatar, but an image to help in making the point of your comment), include the characters [{fig}] (all 7 characters, in the sequence shown) in your comment text. You’ll be prompted to upload your image when you submit the comment. Maximum image size is 6Mpixels. Images larger than 600px wide or 1000px tall will be reduced. Up to three images may be included in a comment. All images are subject to review. Commenting privileges may be curtailed if inappropriate images are posted.

What is 5 - 4?

There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)


This Site

Got a version of Excel that uses the menu interface (Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, or Excel 2003)? This site is for you! If you use a later version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the ribbon interface.

Newest Tips
Subscribe

FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in ExcelTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."

(Your e-mail address is not shared with anyone, ever.)

View the most recent newsletter.