Please Note: This article is written for users of the following Microsoft Excel versions: 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365. If you are using an earlier version (Excel 2003 or earlier), this tip may not work for you. For a version of this tip written specifically for earlier versions of Excel, click here: Counting Only Money Winners.

Counting Only Money Winners

Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated April 23, 2022)
This tip applies to Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365


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 criteria 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 (12103) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Excel in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel 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

Exporting Latitude and Longitude

A handy way to store latitude and longitude values in Excel is to treat them as regular time values. When it comes around ...

Discover More

Using Non-Printing Text Boxes

Text boxes can be helpful for segmenting information from your main document and for creating unique page layouts. What ...

Discover More

WordTips Ribbon 2022 Archive (Table of Contents)

WordTips is a weekly newsletter that provides tips on how to best use Microsoft's word processing software. At ...

Discover More

Program Successfully in Excel! This guide will provide you with all the information you need to automate any task in Excel and save time and effort. Learn how to extend Excel's functionality with VBA to create solutions not possible with the standard features. Includes latest information for Excel 2024 and Microsoft 365. Check out Mastering Excel VBA Programming today!

More ExcelTips (ribbon)

Removing the Last Digit in a Number

If you have a long numeric value in a cell, you may have a need to remove the last digit of that value. You can do so ...

Discover More

Returning a Weight and a Date

If you have two columns containing dates and weights from those dates, you may want to pick a date associated with a ...

Discover More

Understanding Scope for Named Ranges

When you add a named range to a worksheet, you can specify if you want that named range to apply to the workbook or only ...

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 3 + 7?

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 ribbon interface (Excel 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Excel, visit our ExcelTips site focusing on the menu 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.