Count number of times word occurs in selected column?

[clhare]

I need a macro to find out how many times specific text is found in a particular column of a spreadsheet. How would I do that?

[Bob Phillips]

=COUNTIF(A:A,"the words")

[clhare]

I pasted that code in the macro but it turns red. How do you use this code in a macro? Sorry--I'm very new to Excel VBA.

[Bob Phillips]

It isn't macro code, it is a worksheet function. No need for a macro.

[clhare]

Ok, I tried that and noticed that it changes my text in the first row to the function's text (so it gets counted there too). Why is that? Am I doing something wrong or do I just subtract 1 from the total found?

[Bob Phillips]

I don't understand what you mean.

[clhare]

I'm just not too good with Excel. I'll look up how to use functions in the book and figure out what I'm doing wrong.

[Simon Lloyd]

If you dont want it to count A1 then why not =CountIf(A2:A65536, "the words")