Alternative to countif for working with rows

[Tagin]

I have a really simple spreadsheet to record wheter a daily target has been met. It grows by adding colums. I need to record times a certain text appears against a person's name in a row. If I was counting down I would use countif/countifs but can't use this for going across. May goal is to collatre the results in a pivot tabe aby person and date. Any suggestion would be welcome.

 

[arthurbr]

The easiest way is to change the layout of your source data with following columns : Employee - Date - Target
From there building a PT is much easier

 

[mikerickson]

I don't understand the "cant use [countif] going across". COUNTIFS works fine on horizontal (or even rectangular ranges).

 

[Tagin]

The easiest way is to change the layout of your source data with following columns : Employee - Date - Target
From there building a PT is much easier

I don't understand the "cant use [countif] going across". COUNTIFS works fine on horizontal (or even rectangular ranges).

This prompted me to experiment. If I put a range eg B:B countif works as expected. And yes it works perfectlly in a rectangle. When I tried to put a range of a row eg A2:A50 I get an error which prompted th equery. However if I use table as a range eg =COUNTIF(Table3[@],"Achieved"), it works.

So thanks.

 

[mikerickson]

What error did you get when you tried it horizontally and what was the formula that returned that error.