COUNT vs COUNTA: numbers only, or everything?
They look like twins but count different things: COUNT tallies only numbers, while COUNTA tallies every cell that isn't empty — text, dates, errors, TRUE/FALSE and all. Picking the wrong one is the classic reason a 'how many rows' total comes out too low or too high.
The differences at a glance
| COUNT | COUNTA | |
|---|---|---|
| What it counts | Numbers only (incl. dates & times, which are numbers) | Any non-empty cell — text, numbers, errors, logicals |
| Text values | Ignored | Counted |
| Blank cells | Not counted | Not counted |
| Formula returning "" | Not counted | COUNTED — the cell isn't truly empty (the classic trap) |
| Error values (#N/A etc.) | Not counted | Counted |
| Compatibility | Universal | Universal — identical in every Excel, Sheets & LibreOffice version we test |
Which should you use?
- COUNT — You want 'how many numeric entries' — amounts filled in, measurements taken, scores recorded. Text labels and blanks are correctly skipped.
- COUNTA — You want 'how many rows have anything' — names entered, tickets logged, any non-empty response. Watch out for cells holding a formula's "" result, which COUNTA still counts.
Compatibility (Excel for the web, Sheets & LibreOffice executed; desktop Excel per docs)
Both execute identically across every LibreOffice version we test; Google Sheets matches in our executed run; desktop Excel behavior matches per Microsoft's documentation — we do not run desktop Excel. The one behavior that surprises people isn't a compat difference — it's that a cell containing =IF(...,"") is NOT empty, so COUNTA includes it and COUNTBLANK excludes it. To count only visually-blank cells, use COUNTBLANK; to count numbers, COUNT; to count real entries including text, COUNTA. Excel for the web is a separate application with its own calculation engine, and that one we do execute: all 7 corpus cases for these functions matched the documented values there (recalculated on OneDrive, 2026-09-01); the per-case values are on the individual function pages.
Example formulas
| COUNT — numeric entries only | =COUNT(A2:A100) |
| COUNTA — any non-empty cell | =COUNTA(A2:A100) |
| Text/blank rows = COUNTA minus COUNT | =COUNTA(A2:A100)-COUNT(A2:A100) |
Full per-version details on each function page: COUNT · COUNTA.
See also: COUNTIF vs COUNTIFS · ISBLANK vs empty string.