Table of Contents
Counting specific words in Google Sheets is easy. First, highlight the cell or range of cells you want to count. Next, click the “Data” tab and select “Data Validation.” Under Criteria, select “Contains” and enter the word you want to count. Finally, click on the “CountA” function to count the words. The result will be displayed in the cell you selected.
You can use the following formula to count the occurrence of a specific word in Google Sheets:
=COUNTIF(B2:B15, "*Guard*")
This particular formula will count the number of cells in the range B2:B15 that contain the word “Guard” somewhere in the cell.
The following example shows how to use this formula in practice.
Example: Count Specific Words in Google Sheets
Suppose we have the following dataset that contains information about various basketball players:
We can use the following formula to count the number of cells in column B that contain “Guard” somewhere in the cell:
=COUNTIF(B2:B15, "*Guard*")
The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:
From the output we can see that 6 cells in column B contain “Guard” somewhere in the cell.
We can confirm this is correct by manually identifying each of these cells:
To find the count of cells that contain a different word, simply replace Guard with another word in the formula.
For example, use the following formula to count the number of cells that contain “Forward” somewhere in the cell:
=COUNTIF(B2:B15, "*Forward*")
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common operations in Google Sheets: