Which Excel function would you use to count the number of cells that meet certain criteria?

To determine how many cells meet specific criteria in Excel, the appropriate function to use is COUNTIF. This function is designed specifically for counting cells based on a single condition. You would provide the range of cells you want to evaluate and the criteria that define which cells should be counted. For example, if you want to count how many sales figures are above $100, you would set that condition in the function, and it would return the total number of cells that meet that criterion.

COUNTIF effectively simplifies the task of analyzing data by allowing users to apply specific conditions for counting, which can be particularly useful for summarizing large datasets. This makes it an essential tool for anyone working with data in Excel, especially when needing to filter information based on certain parameters.

While other functions like SUMIF and AVERAGEIF deal with summing or averaging based on criteria, they do not count cells. MAXIF isn't a standard Excel function for counting or applying conditions, further reinforcing that COUNTIF is the correct choice for this task.