Displaying a Count of Zeros on the Status Bar

Jeremy's company is often interested in how many cells contain the value zero. He wonders if there is a way to customize the status bar to automatically display the COUNTIF formula. He knows he can see the results of functions such as AVERAGE, COUNT, SUM and others, but can't find a way to do a more complex COUNTIF display.

Unfortunately there is no way to modify the default functions available on the status bar. There are, however, some workarounds that you can consider. The obvious is to use a formula in a cell to evaluate the number of zeros in a range:

=COUNTIF(A1:E52,0)

You could also select the desired range and use the Find tool (Ctrl+F) to search for the number 0. If you click on Find All, the dialog box reports the number of occurrences in the selected range—the number of zeros.

There is one potential drawback to using the Find and Replace tool. By default, it will find all instances of "zeros" such as those in values like 20, 60, 105, 1003, etc. You can, however, modify how the Find and Replace tool does its work so that it finds only cells that actually contain 0. Just follow these steps:

1. Press Ctrl+F to display the Find and Replace dialog box.
2. Expand the dialog box by clicking the Options button. (See Figure 1.)



Figure 1. The Find tab of the Find and Replace dialog box.

3. Make sure that the Match Entire Cell Contents check box is selected.
4. In the Find What box type 0.
5. Click the Find All option. Excel reports the number of occurrences it located.

If you prefer, you can create a short macro that will do the calculation and display it on the status bar. The following is an example of a macro that is run every time the selection is changed in the worksheet.

Private Sub Worksheet_SelectionChange(ByVal Target As Range)
    zCount = Application.WorksheetFunction.CountIf(Target.Cells,0)
    Application.StatusBar = "Selection has " & CStr(zCount) & " zeros"
End Sub

All you need to do is make sure that you place this code within the code module for the worksheet you want affected. (Just right-click the worksheet's tab and choose View Code from the resulting Context menu. That's where the code should be placed.)

ExcelTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Excel training. This tip (12511) applies to Microsoft Excel 2007, 2010, 2013, and 2016. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Excel here: Displaying a Count of Zeros on the Status Bar.