COUNTIF not working with formatted cells

[Kingchaos64]

I have a formula of =COUNTIF(E5:OV5,"*-*")

I would like this formula to count all the cells in row 5 that have a dash in them. The cells that have a dashes look like this 00-00-00. To make data entry easier I put a custom formula in the columns and used 00-00-00 as the sample.
Which works great, it makes it super fast to enter the set of numbers without having to put in the dash.

The problem is the COUNTIF formula doesn't recognize the numbers as having dashes so it doesn't count them

Is there a work around to this?

 

[kanadaaa]

If you have the custom cell format "##-##-##", any 6-digit number will appear with hyphens.
Then, why do you have to find hyphens, if all the numeric data in the row have hyphens?
Is there any reason why you can't just use =COUNTIF(E5:OV5,"<>")?

 

[Kingchaos64]

If you have the custom cell format "##-##-##", any 6-digit number will appear with hyphens.
Then, why do you have to find hyphens, if all the numeric data in the row have hyphens?
Is there any reason why you can't just use =COUNTIF(E5:OV5,"<>")?

There is other numerical data in the row which I don't want counted but the data I want counted will always be a 6 digit number and none of the other data would be that many numbers. Could I do a countif equals 6 somehow?

 

[Peter_SSs]

See if this counts what you want?

=COUNT(FILTER(E5:OV5,LEN(E5:OV5)=6,""))

 

[Kingchaos64]

See if this counts what you want?

=COUNT(FILTER(E5:OV5,LEN(E5:OV5)=6,""))

Ok I'll try that tomorrow morning thanks