In the example above, we are using: The result of all this calculation is a list of items, where there is one item per cell in the range, and each item a number based on the calculation above. In other words, we have a list of word counts, with one word count per cell. SUMPRODUCT then sums this list and returns a total for all cells in the range. Note that the formula inside SUMPRODUCT will return 1 even if a cell is empty. If you need to guard against this problem, you can add another array to SUMPRODUCT as below. The double hyphen coerces the result to 1’s and 0’s. We use TRIM again to make sure we don’t count cells that have one or more spaces.

Dave Bruns

Hi - I’m Dave Bruns, and I run Exceljet with my wife, Lisa. Our goal is to help you work faster in Excel. We create short videos, and clear examples of formulas, functions, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and charts.