COUNTIF Function in Excel: Count Cells That Meet a Condition

📎 This article includes 1 downloadable practice file ↓

⏱ 1 min readUpdated 28 September 2026

StatisticalLevel: IntermediateAvailable in: Excel 2007+

In this article
  1. Syntax
  2. Examples
  3. Example 1
  4. Example 2
  5. Related functions

COUNTIF counts cells that meet one condition. It is also the simplest duplicate checker.

Syntax

=COUNTIF(range, criteria)
Argument What it means
range Cells to check.
criteria Condition, e.g. “Paid”, “>=50000”, “*@gmail.com”.

Examples

Example 1

=COUNTIF(C:C, "Overdue")

Number of overdue invoices.

Example 2

=COUNTIF($A$2:$A$500, A2)>1

TRUE for duplicate IDs — use it in conditional formatting.

COUNTIFS · SUMIF · MATCH

📚 Part of the free Excel course: Beginner → Expert · Try it in the Formula Lab or ask the AI Helper.

📎 Practice files for this article

  • 📗
    SUMIFS/COUNTIFS scenarios workbookConditional sums and counts with dates, OR logic and wildcards, plus 4 classic reasons totals come out wrong — all with PASS/FAIL checks.
    ⬇ XLSX · 9 KB

Free to use for learning. Files with macros (.bas) are plain text — import them with Alt+F11 → File → Import File, and always test on a copy.

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