You can use the following formula in Excel to count the number of cells that are not equal to a specific text:
=COUNTIF(A2:A11, "<>some_string")
This particular formula counts the number of cells in the range A2:A11 that are not equal to “some_string.”
Note: The <> operator stands for “not equal” in Excel.
The following example shows how to use this formula in practice.
Example: COUNTIF Not Equal to Text in Excel
Suppose we have the following dataset that contains information about various basketball players:
We can use the following formula to count the number of cells in the Team column that are not equal to “Hawks”:
=COUNTIF(A2:A11, "<>Hawks")
The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:
From the output we can see that there are 7 cells not equal to “Hawks” in the Team column.
If you would like to count the number of cells not equal to several different text, you can instead use the COUNTIFS function.
For example, we can use the following formula to count the number of cells in the Team column that are not equal to “Hawks” or “Spurs”:
=COUNTIFS(A2:A11,"<>Hawks", A2:A11, "<>Spurs")
The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:
From the output we can see that there are 6 cells not equal to “Hawks” or “Spurs” in the Team column.
Additional Resources
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common operations in Excel:
Excel: Use COUNTIF with Multiple Ranges
Excel: Use COUNTIF with Multiple Criteria in Same Column
Excel: COUNTIF Greater Than But Less Than Some Number
