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How to count cells above the average

✓ Verified in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 ✓ Verified in Google Sheets (2026-08-30)

How many values beat the mean — above-average performers, over-target rows.

The formula

AppFormulaNotes
Excel (desktop)=COUNTIF(A2:A6,">"&AVERAGE(A2:A6))Concatenate the operator with the computed average. Use >= to include values equal to the mean.
Google Sheets=COUNTIF(A2:A6,">"&AVERAGE(A2:A6))Identical.
LibreOffice Calc=COUNTIF(A2:A6,">"&AVERAGE(A2:A6))Identical.

How it works

COUNTIF's criteria can be built on the fly: ">"&AVERAGE(A2:A6) evaluates the average (30 here) and glues it to the greater-than sign, giving the criterion ">30". Two values (40 and 50) exceed the mean, so the count is 2. The & is what lets a criterion reference a calculated value — the same trick works with a cell (">"&C1) or another function (">"&MEDIAN(...)). Excel also has a built-in COUNTIF-style shortcut, but this concatenation pattern is the portable, general way and extends to SUMIF/AVERAGEIF.

Verified, not just documented

We ran =COUNTIF(A2:A6,">"&AVERAGE(A2:A6)) in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 (headless, with forced recalculation) and it returned 2 — exactly the expected result. We then ran the same formulas in Google Sheets, executed 2026-08-30: a formula-only workbook goes into Google Drive, which converts it to a Sheet and recalculates every formula with Google’s own engine, and comes back out as .xlsx carrying the values Google computed. It returned 2 for the worked example, the same value LibreOffice produced. Both engines’ numbers on this page are executed results. The Excel formula follows Microsoft’s official documented syntax — we do not run desktop Excel.

Functions used

COUNTIF · AVERAGE — see full Excel, Google Sheets & LibreOffice compatibility for each.

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