Excel Formula to count specific specific words in cells

Question

I have an issue if somebody spare his time to have a look at the problem so it will be nice. Thanks in advance.

I have different text in cells like yes, no, maybe. I need to find the total number of cells that contain these text in a specific cell under average box. I used the formula

=COUNTIF(F3:K3,"*yes* ,*no* ,*maybe*") but the value what I got is like 1/0/1900 under average cell block

If you please have a look at the diagram so you will get my questions easily. I need a general formula because I don't know the extension of range.

Answer 1

1. It seems you have date formatting enabled for your output cell at E3. Change it back to general or number to actually get a number instead of a number turned date

2. You will need to count for each word and then combine the results.

   =COUNTIF(F3:K3, "yes") + COUNTIF(F3:K3, "no") + COUNTIF(F3:K3, "maybe")

3. Optional: Make sure to always count between F and K independent of our current row number:

   =COUNTIF($F3:$K3, "yes") + COUNTIF($F3:$K3, "no") + COUNTIF($F3:$K3, "maybe")

4. For your consideration: Depending on your underlying problem, instead of counting strings you might consider to use numbers and do a simple sum(). Yes = 1, No = 0, Maybe = .5