(Excel examples for Beginners)
In this end-to-end excel example, you will learn – How to Count cells that do not contain specific text in Excel.
How to Count cells that do not contain specific text in Excel
Generic formula
=COUNTIF(rng,"<>*txt*")
Explanation
To count the number of cells that do not contain certain text, you can use the COUNTIF function. In the generic form of the formula (above), rng is a range of cells, txt represents the text that cells should not contain, and “*” is a wildcard matching any number of characters.
In the example, the active cell contains this formula:
=COUNTIF(B4:B11,"<>*a*")
How this formula works
COUNTIF counts the number of cells in the range that do not contain “a” by matching the content of each cell against the pattern “<>*a*”, which is supplied as the criteria. The “*” symbol (the asterisk) is a wildcard in Excel that means “match any number of characters” and “<>” means “does not equal”, so this pattern will count any cell that does not contain “a” in any position. The count of cells that match this pattern is returned as a number.
With a cell reference
You can easily adjust this formula to use the contents of another cell that contains the text you do not want to count. The generic form of the formula looks like this:
=COUNTIF(rng,"<>*"&a1&"*")
Exclude blanks
To also exclude blank cells, you can switch to COUNTIFS and add another criteria like this:
=COUNTIFS(range,"<>*a*",range,"?*") // requires some text
Disclaimer: The information and code presented within this recipe/tutorial is only for educational and coaching purposes for beginners and developers. Anyone can practice and apply the recipe/tutorial presented here, but the reader is taking full responsibility for his/her actions. The author (content curator) of this recipe (code / program) has made every effort to ensure the accuracy of the information was correct at time of publication. The author (content curator) does not assume and hereby disclaims any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from accident, negligence, or any other cause. The information presented here could also be found in public knowledge domains.
Learn by Coding: v-Tutorials on Applied Machine Learning and Data Science for Beginners
Latest end-to-end Learn by Coding Projects (Jupyter Notebooks) in Python and R:
All Notebooks in One Bundle: Data Science Recipes and Examples in Python & R.
End-to-End Python Machine Learning Recipes & Examples.
End-to-End R Machine Learning Recipes & Examples.
Applied Statistics with R for Beginners and Business Professionals
Data Science and Machine Learning Projects in Python: Tabular Data Analytics
Data Science and Machine Learning Projects in R: Tabular Data Analytics
Python Machine Learning & Data Science Recipes: Learn by Coding
R Machine Learning & Data Science Recipes: Learn by Coding
Comparing Different Machine Learning Algorithms in Python for Classification (FREE)
There are 2000+ End-to-End Python & R Notebooks are available to build Professional Portfolio as a Data Scientist and/or Machine Learning Specialist. All Notebooks are only $29.95. We would like to request you to have a look at the website for FREE the end-to-end notebooks, and then decide whether you would like to purchase or not.
Excel formula for Beginners – How to Count cells not equal to many things in Excel
Excel to Python Example – How to count number of blank cells in a dataset
Excel formula for Beginners – How to Count cells that contain numbers in Excel