Google Spreadsheet, Count IF contains a string

Question

I have a column like this:

What devices will you be using?

iPad
Kindle & iPad
No Tablet
iPad
iPad & Windows

How do I count the amount of people that said iPad?

This formula does work for exact matches but not if it contains an additional value:

=(COUNTIF(A2:A51,"=iPad")/COUNTA(A2:A51))*1

Any Suggestions?

Solution 1

It will likely have been solved by now, but I ran accross this and figured to give my input

=COUNTIF(a2:a51;"*iPad*")

The important thing is that separating parameters in google docs is using a ; and not a ,

Solution 2

In case someone is still looking for the answer, this worked for me:

=COUNTIF(A2:A51, "*" & B1 & "*")

B1 containing the iPad string.

Solution 3

You should use

=COUNTIF(A2:A51, "*iPad*")/COUNTA(A2:A51)

Additionally, if you wanted to count more than one element, like iPads OR Kindles, you would use

=SUM(COUNTIF(A2:A51, {"*iPad*", "*kindle*"}))/COUNTA(A2:A51)

in the numerator.

Solution 4

Try using wildcards directly in the COUNTIF function :

=(COUNTIF(A2:A51,"=*iPad*")/COUNTA(A2:A51))*1

Solution 5

Wildcards worked for me when the string I was searching for could be entered manually. However, I wanted to store this string in another cell and refer to it. I couldn't figure out how to do this with wildcards so I ended up doing the following:

A1 is the cell containing my search string. B and C are the columns within which I want to count the number of instances of A1, including within strings:

=COUNTIF(ARRAYFORMULA(ISNUMBER(SEARCH(A1, B:C))), TRUE)

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Comments

[eLRuLL]

You can use FIND("iPad",CELL) to check if a text is inside another text.

[Cray Kao]

If you have answer, please check it.

[Wilf]

@eLRuLL that appears to be for only single cells. and the below only seems to be for Google Spreadsheets only :/ EDIT: other software just handles regular expressions differently (i.e. properly)! :

[Cody]

It came up as a "Parse Error"

[Simon]

Oops.. check out my edited answer ("=*iPad*") ... the = was out of the brackets

[Simon]

@Cody did you try it out ?

[Cody]

I checked the edited answer, still coming up as a parse error.

[alexsuslin]

it depends on the locale

[mike]

this helped me because it demonstrates how to use the wildcards combined with a cell reference, rather than a hard-coded string

[john]

Agree with mike, usage of the wildcards instead of cell reference or hardcode make this very useful

[Loïc Faure-Lacroix]

Nice catch for the semicolon.

[Dan Mergens]

This question has already been answered. Your suggestion produces the wrong answer (only summing 'iPad' entries and excludes entries containing the 'iPad' string).