Solved: Counting Substring Presence in Range

[flea333]

I want to count how many cells contain a substring in a range using a worksheet cell function. I know countif, mid, etc but I don't know how to use mid in countif.

[Bob Phillips]

TRy

=COUNTIF(the_range,"*data*")

[flea333]

duh, I forgot about that.

Thanks!

[flea333]

Actually, the problem is that I am referencing another cell for the data and it isn't a hard string. So I tried A12&"*" but that doesn't seem to work.

Problem is that I have a name, ie Smith, John, however my list I'm searching for may or may not have a status appended to the name, ie "Smith, John (note)". I need to ignore the "(note)" part of just find the Smith, John part.

[Bob Phillips]

That should work

=COUNTIF(the_range,A12&"*")