IF Condition - Join Multiple Columns

Question

I need to tally the number of times a term appears. Unfortunately, the terms were not well organized so a term may appear in more than one column - so I can\'t use just

Answer 1

Seems a case for COUNTIF. Say your data is in A1:H1:

=COUNTIF(A1:H1,"HEALTH")

Answer 2

Depending on how you want to count your input cells, and assuming your input data is in A1:F1, you may want (1)

=COUNTIF(A1:F1,"HEALTH")

as posted by pnuts, or (2)

=COUNTIF(A1:F1,"*HEALTH*")

This version also counts cells which contain HEALTH with other characters as well.

An alternative for formula (1) is

=SUM(IF(A1:F1="HEALTH",1,0))

entered as an array formula with Ctrl+Shift+Enter. Similarly for formula (2).

There are other more complex cases you may want to consider: a) cells containing HEALTH more than once, b) HEALTH only as whole word, etc.