Counting values within a column

Richard C

Can you count the number of repeat values with a column.  For example--building a board roster and want to identify gender.  Can I create a formula that counts how many females are in the column at the bottom of the last row of the column? Looking at the formula worksheet it is suggesting =COUNTIF(Female:Female, Female1). Get #BLOCKED or CIRCULAR REFERENCE.

Help!

Adam Overton

In your case, your target range Female:Female includes the sum you're about to create, so it is circular. Include just the rows below to fix, or it looks like what you might want to do is put:

=COUNTIF(Gender:Gender, "Female")

to create a sum of what that column has as female.

In cases like these, it is sometimes useful to create a parent row for your data, and then another section at the top for your summary, and then you can do:

=COUNTIF(CHILDREN(Gender3), "Female")) 

where Gender3 is whatever the parent row cell is in the Gender column.