Excel frustration

I know ... windows forum ... but asking a general M$ app question ...

I am getting a little frustrated with Excel 2003.
I am not exactly the worlds best user of excel, but sometime the necessary code for formulae just escapes me.

The lasted is using countif.

I know it is countif(range,criteria) but when I try and seperate a range it reports an error
COUNTIF(D8+F8+H8+J8+K8+L8+M8+N8+O8+Q8+S8+T8+V8+X8+ Z8+AB8+AD8+AF8+AH8+AJ8+AL8+AN8+AP8+AQ8+AS8+AT8+AV8 +AW8+AX8+AY8+BA8+BB8+BC8+BD8+BF8+BG8+BH8+BI8,"=+") is not liked. However it is not every column that is needed and short of having another worksheet to pull the data in from (I am considering it) I am running short of ideas.

If anyone can point me in the right direction it would be appreciated.

Tony

What you appear to be asking it is to Count a cell if it contains "=+". This will give an error, because you are trying to use a mathematical formula on two symbols. What is the actual criteria you are trying to count on?

Is the problem not that the 'D8+F8+...' is not a 'range'?

You need to do something like this...

= countif(D8, "=+") + countif(F8,"=+") + countif(H8,"=+")... etc.

just had a similar answer on a NG ... I can't believe I missed that, even after trying =countif((D8,"=+")+(F8,"=+")) too ...

I nearly had the right idea ...

Thanks for the quick response.