Count occurrences of particular text in entire Excel workbook
It is easy for us to count how many times particular text or a number value occurs in a range of cells with the COUNTIF function. However, to count occurrences of particular text in entire workbook, a more complex formula is required. This article is going to demonstrate a formula based on the SUMPRODUCT, COUNTIF and INDIRECT function to solve this problem.
How to count occurrences in entire workbook?
Supposing there are 4 worksheets (Sheet2, Sheet3, Sheet4 and Sheet5) in your workbook, and you want to count how many times the particular text “Laptop” appears across these 4 worksheets, you can do as follows to get it done.
Generic Formula
=SUMPRODUCT(COUNTIF(INDIRECT(“‘”&range1&”‘!”&range2),criteria))
Arguments
How to use this formula?
1. You will first need to create a new sheet and list all sheet names in a range of cells. In this case, I list all sheet names in range B7:B10.
2. Select a blank cell to output the result.
3. Enter one of the below formulas into it and press the Enter key to get the result.
If you have already entered the particular text into a cell (such as B3), you can reference this cell in the formula as follows:
=SUMPRODUCT(COUNTIF(INDIRECT("'"&B7:B10&"'!A1:Z10000"),B3))
Or directly type the particular text enclosing with double quotation marks in the formula like this:
=SUMPRODUCT(COUNTIF(INDIRECT("'"&B7:B10&"'!A1:Z10000"),"Laptop"))
Note: Here the range A1:Z10000 is an arbitrary range, you can change it to suit your data
How this formula works?
=SUMPRODUCT(COUNTIF(INDIRECT("'"&B7:B10&"'!A1:Z10000"),B3))
- "'"&B7:B10&"'!A1:Z10000": Here each sheet name in the array joined via concatenation to the range A1:Z10000, and you will get an array as {"'Sheet2'!A1:Z10000";"'Sheet3'!A1:Z10000";"'Sheet4'!A1:Z10000";"'Sheet5'!A1:Z10000"}.
- INDIRECT({"'Sheet2'!A1:Z10000";"'Sheet3'!A1:Z10000";"'Sheet4'!A1:Z10000";"'Sheet5'!A1:Z10000"}): The INDIRECT function refers the ranges in the four sheets.
- COUNTIF(INDIRECT("'"&B7:B10&"'!A1:Z10000"),B3): The COUNTIF function counts the number of times the specific value appears in each sheet and returns an array {13;13;13;13}. It means that the particular text appears 13 times in each sheet.
- SUMPRODUCT({13;13;13;13}): The SUMPRODUCT function sums all numbers in the array and returns the final result as 52.
Related functions
Excel SUMPRODUCT function
The Excel SUMPRODUCT function can be used to multiply two or more columns or arrays together, and then get the sum of products.
Excel COUNTIF function
The Excel COUNTIF function is a statistical function in Excel which is used to count the number of cells that meet a criterion.
Excel INDIRECT function
The Excel INDIRECT function converts a text string to a valid reference.
Related formulas
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Count multiple criteria with NOT logic in Excel
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Count or sum only whole numbers in Excel
This post provides two formulas based on the SUMPRODUCT function and the MOD function to help you count and sum only whole numbers in a range of cells in Excel.
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