A to Z of Excel Functions: The COUNTBLANK Function

Welcome back to our regular A to Z of Excel Functions blog. Today we look at the COUNTBLANK function.

The COUNTBLANK function

This function counts empty cells in a specified range of cells most of the time.  It does lie occasionally…

The COUNTBLANK function employs the following syntax to operate:

The COUNTBLANK function has the following argument:

• Range: this is required and represents the range from which you want to count the blank cells.

It should be further noted that:

• cells with formulas that return "" (empty text) are also counted.  This is different behaviour to both the COUNTA and ISBLANK functions which deem empty text to be non-blank, i.e. COUNTA(range) + COUNTBLANK(range) does not necessarily equal the number of cells in the range, which many modellers assume to be an identity
• cells with zero values are not counted.

Please see my example below: 

We’ll continue our A to Z of Excel Functions soon. Keep checking back – there’s a new blog post every other business day.

A full page of the function articles can be found here.