Countif Reading only PART of a cell?

[404error]

can countif, or any formula for that matter, read only part of a cell:

a
1: one, two, three
2: one, two, four
3: nine, six, two

formula: countif(a1:a3,"one")

and have that calculate "2" and not "0"

the current formula looks for cell that only contain "one"
cells a1 and a2 contain "one" but thay contain other data as well, and are then ignored.
anyway around this?

 

[Aladin Akyurek]

=COUNTIF(A1:A3,"*one*")

but this would also count in an entry like "someone".

 

[404error]

Perfect, Thank you!

That will work fine, I’m using it to count dates, (the number of time a date was entered in a spread sheet) I have “archived” dates in one column however, just listing them in the same cell as I update them [ 11.15.2005, 11.29,2005, 12,05,2005 ]