How to quickly count if cells are equal to x or y in Excel?

Supposing you have a range of data, and you want to count the cells if are equal to apple or mango in the two list, how can you quickly count them without manually count one by one?
Count number of cells are equal to criteria x or y with formula
Count number of cells are equal to criteria x or y with Defined Function
Count number of cells are equal to criteria x or y with Kutools for Excel

Count number of cells are equal to criteria x or y with formula

Here I introduce some formulas can help you to count number of cells which are equal to x or y.

Count cells are equal to x or y

Select a blank cell, for instance, E2, and enter this formula =COUNTIF(A2:B7,"Apple")+COUNTIF(A2:B7,"Mango") and press Enter key to get result.

In above formula A2:B7 is the range you want to count from, and Apple and Mango are the values you want to count. You can change them as you need.

Count rows which contain x or y in a range

Select a blank cell, E2 for instance, and enter this formula =SUM(IF((A2:A7="Apple")+(B2:B7="Mango"),1,0)), press Shift + Ctrl + Enter key to get the correct result.

Count number of cells are equal to criteria x or y with Defined Function

With Defined Function, you also can count the number of cells which equal to the criteria x or y.

1. Press Alt + F11 keys to open Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.

2. Click Insert > Module, and paste the code into the script.

Code: Count either or

Function FindTwoStrings(Rng As Range, Str1 As String, Optional Str2 As String = "") As Long
    'UpdatebyExtendoffice20160705
    Application.Volatile
    Dim xCell As Range
    For Each xCell In Rng
        If (InStr(1, UCase(xCell.Value), UCase(Str1), 1) > 0) Or _
           (InStr(1, UCase(xCell.Value), UCase(Str2), 1) > 0) Then _
          FindTwoStrings = FindTwoStrings + 1
    Next
End Function

3. Save the code, and go back to select a blank cell you want to count the result, and enter this formula =FindTwoStrings(A2:A7,D3,D4) and press Enter key to get the count.

Tip: in the formula, A2:A7 is the range you want to count from, and D3 and D4 are the strings you want to count.

Count number of cells are equal to criteria x or y with Kutools for Excel

If you want to count the number of cells which are equal to x or y, and then locate them, you can apply Kutools for Excel’s Select Specific Cells utility.

After free installing Kutools for Excel, please do as below:

1. Select the data range you want to count the cells, and then click Kutools > Select > Select Specific Cells. See screenshot:

2. In the Select Specific Cells dialog, check one option as you need in the Selection type section, and both select Equals from the two drop down list, and enter the criteria separately into the two textboxes, and remember to check Or option. see screenshot:

3. Click Ok or Apply, and a dialog pops out to tell you how many cells meet your criteria, and at the meanwhile, the cells equal to either criteria 1 or criteria 2 are selected.