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How to count cells match to either X or Y in Excel?

Author Siluvia Last modified

In many cases, you may need to count cells that contain text value “juice” or text value “pie” in Excel as the left screenshot shown. This article will show you some methods to achieve it.

count cells match to either X or Y

Count cells match to either X or Y in Excel with formula
Count cells match to either X or Y in Excel with User-defined function
Easily count cells match to either X or Y in Excel with Kutools for Excel

Count cells match to either X or Y in Excel with formula

The following formula will help you to count cells match to either value X or Y in Excel. Please do as follows.

1. Select a blank cell, enter the below formula into it and then press the Enter key.

=COUNTIF(A2:A7,"*juice*")+COUNTIF(A2:A7,"*pie*")

count cells match to either X or Y with formula

Note: In the formula, you can see there are wildcard characters * display on the left and right sides of the certain text value. You can remove the wildcard characters if you want to count cells exactly equal to either X or Y.

Then you will get the total number of cells match to either text value “juice” or “pie” in Excel.

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Count cells match to either X or Y in Excel with User-defined function

You can also create a User-defined function to count cells match to either X or Y in Excel.

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

2. In the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window, click Insert > Module. Then copy and paste the following VBA code into the Module window.

VBA code: Count cells match to either X or Y in Excel

Function FindTwoStrings(Target As Range, xS1 As String, xS2 As String) As Long
    Application.Volatile
    If TypeName(Target) <> "Range" Then Exit Function
    Dim xCell As Range
    For Each xCell In Target.Cells
      If xCell.Value <> "" Then
        If (InStrRev(UCase(xCell.Value), UCase(xS1), -1, vbTextCompare) > 0) Or _
           (InStrRev(UCase(xCell.Value), UCase(xS2), -1, vbTextCompare) > 0) _
           Then FindTwoStrings = FindTwoStrings + 1
      End If
    Next xCell
End Function

3. Press Alt + Q keys to close the Microsoft Visual Basic for Applications window.

4. Now select a blank cell, enter the below formula into it and then press the Enter key to get the result. 

=FindTwoStrings(A2:A7,"juice","pie")

Count cells match to either X or Y with user defined function

Count cells match to either X or Y in Excel with Kutools for Excel

Here we recommend you the Select Specific Cells utility of Kutools for Excel. With this utility, you can easily count cells match to either X or Y in a specified range in Excel. Please do as follows.

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1. Select the range you need to count, then click Kutools > Select > Select Specific Cells. See screenshot:

click Select Specific Cells feature of kutools

2. In the Select Specific Cells dialog box, you need to:

1). Select the Cell option in the Selection type section;
2). In the Specific type section, select Contains in the first drop-down list, and enter the first text value into the text box.;
3). Select Contains in the second drop-down list, and enter the second text value into the text box, then choose the Or option;
4). Click the OK button.

set options in the Select Specific Cells dialog box

3. Then another Select Specific Cells dialog box pops up to tell you how many cells were found and selected. After that, you can click the OK button to close it.

  If you want to have a free trial (30-day) of this utility, please click to download it, and then go to apply the operation according above steps.

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