How-To Geek on MSN

How to do math in Excel without formulas

The text trap: If you select numbers and the status bar stays blank (or only shows the Count), your numbers are formatted as text—and Excel can't sum words! This tells you that you should click the ...
How-To Geek on MSN

Don't trust Excel's COUNTA function to count non-blank cells—here's a better method

In most counting scenarios in Excel, COUNTBLANK reliably counts blank cells, and COUNTA reliably counts populated cells.