Need Assistance with my Countifs OR

Claudia G

I have read other Q/As and tried multiple options, but keep getting #unparseable errors.

Basically, I have a table I have created at the bottom of my spreadsheet for reporting purposes. I want to count how many open items have the accountable person match the name in the "Details/Description" column of the current row of my spreadsheet.

This works:

=COUNTIFS(Status:Status, <>"Complete", Status:Status, <>"Not Needed", Accountable:Accountable, [Details/Description]@row)

However, some items have 2 accountable people, so I want to check for a match in either the Accountable column or the Accountable2 column. This is one of the formulas I have tried that is not working

=COUNTIFS(Status:Status, <>"Complete", Status:Status, <>"Not Needed", OR([Details/Descriptions]@row,Accountable:Accountable, [Details/Description]@row,Accountable2:Accountable2))

Even tried this after seeing the + option on a Youtube video. It does not work either:

=COUNTIFS((Status:Status, <>"Complete", Status:Status, <>"Not Needed", Accountable:Accountable, [Details/Description]@row) +(Status:Status, <>"Complete", Status:Status, <>"Not Needed", Accountable2:Accountable2, [Details/Description]@row))

Nick Korna

Hi @Claudia G,

Something like this?

=COUNTIFS(Status:Status, AND(@cell <> "Completed", @cell <> "Not Needed"), [Details/Description]:[Details/Description], OR(@cell = Accountable@row, @cell = [Accountable2]@row))

Count if: Status is not "Completed" or "Not Needed" and Accountable or Accountable2 contents match Details/Description.

Hope this helps, but if I've misunderstood something or you have any problems/questions then just post! 🙂

Claudia G

Thank you. At least that formula was accepted, but it is not returning the correct result (the field I tested should have just increased by 2 when I included Accountable2, but in increased by 6 instead. Also, when I copied to other field in the table the number of matches found for each row was the same (and they are all different in actuality)

Paul Newcome

Are you able to provide screenshots for context?