Using The Countif AND Countifs Functions In Excel 2007
The COUNTIF function is used to calculate the number of cells in a given range which satisfy a condition. COUNTIFS does pretty much the same. However, this time, we can specify multiple criteria. By way of illustration, let’s say we have a worksheet containing four columns: the date, the number of phone calls received, the number of complaints and the percentage of calls which were complaints.
We would now like to create a summary worksheet to calculate the number of days where the percentage of calls that were complaints is, firstly, under 5%; secondly, between five and 10% and, thirdly, over 10%.
To find those days where there were fewer than 5% or more than 10%, we can use COUNTIF function because we are dealing with a simple condition: less than 5% or greater than 10%. However, to find those days where there were between 5% and 10%, we will need to use multiple criteria; firstly, greater than or equal to five and, secondly, less than or equal to 10. For this reason, we will need the COUNTIFS function.
When creating formulas, it is always useful to name the cells are you are referencing. To have Excel create the names for you automatically, select all of your data, including the column headings then, in the Formulas Tab of the Excel Ribbon, click on Create from Selection. Activate the option “Create names from values in the Top Row” and click OK. Let’s say that the heading at the top of the fourth column (the one containing the percentage of calls which were actually complaints) is “Percentage”, this will be the name that we will use in our COUNTIF formulas.
Next, we can move over to the Summary worksheet and click in the cell where we want to calculate the total number of days where less than 5% of our calls were complaints. In this cell, we would enter the formula =COUNTIF(Percentage,”<5″). Please note that, when using COUNTIF and COUNTIFS, all criteria must be surrounded by quotation marks.
In a similar way, to calculate the total number of days where more than 10% of our calls were complaints, we would use the formula =COUNTIF(Percentage,”>10″).
Finally, to return the total number of days where between 5 and 10% of our calls were complaints, we would use the formula =COUNTIFS(Percentage,”>=5″,Percentage,”<=10″). The COUNTIFS function enables you to repeat the two arguments used with the COUNTIF function (criteria range and criteria) up to 127 times. Thus, in our example, criteria_range1 is Percentage; criteria1 is “>=5″; criteria_range2 is also Percentage; and criteria2 is “<=10″.
The author is a training consultant with On-SiteTrainingCourses.Com, an independent computer training company offering Microsoft Excel Classes in London and throughout the UK.
