Counting character entries while excluding others

[Miklopolis]

Hi there and thanks for looking. I am attempting to count the number of times any character string appears in a range. In my example I would like to count "STL" and "NYI" but not "—". I know about the COUNTA function and the COUNTIF function. I attempted using a combo. of IF and COUNTA but was unable to get the result I want. Is there a way I can count only the cells where the value is not equal to — ?

Thanks!

MON TUE WED Oct
9-Oct 10-Oct 11-Oct 4th-11th
STL — NYI 2 should go here

 

[barry houdini]

This formula will count cells not equal to "-"

=COUNTIF(range,"<>-")

but it will include blanks

perhaps

=SUM(COUNTIF(range,{"STL","NYI"}))

 

[Oaktree]

Try:

=SUMPRODUCT(--(LEN(A2:E2)=3),--(A2:E2<>"-"))