But wait!
Say an AK cell contained TWO, or even 27 instances of substring "1?????1???m?" - will COUNTIF still work?
It will count that cell just once.
So what should the formula look like to count EVERY instance?
Oh well, I think I'll pass on VBAs. Was able to clean up and simplify and dropped from 16 sec to 10 sec to about 6 sec so good enough! Thanks again.