Google Sheets: How to Use Case Sensitive COUNTIF

By default, the COUNTIF function in Google Sheets is not case-sensitive.

However, you can use the following formula to perform the equivalent of a case-sensitive COUNTIF function:

=SUMPRODUCT(REGEXMATCH(A1:A10, "Mavs"))

This particular formula will only count the number of cells in the range A2:A10 equal to “Mavs” with the exact case match.

In other words, cells with the text “mavs” or “MAVS” would not be counted.

The following example shows how to use this formula in practice.

Example: How to Use Case Sensitive COUNTIF in Google Sheets

Suppose we have the following dataset that contains information about various basketball players:

Suppose we used the following formula to count the number of cells in the Team column that have text equal to “Mavs”:

=COUNTIF(A1:A10, "Mavs")

The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:

The formula returns a value of 4 since it found “Mavs” (case-insensitive) exactly four times in the Team column.

To use a case-sensitive COUNTIF function, we can instead type the following formula into cell D2:

=SUMPRODUCT(REGEXMATCH(A1:A10, "Mavs"))

The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:

This formula returns a value of 2 since only two cells in the Team column have the text “Mavs” with the case matching.

Note: This formula is able to perform a case-sensitive count because the REGEXMATCH function in Google Sheets is case-sensitive by default.

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common operations in Google Sheets: