COUNTIF pointed at multiple contacts in a cell

JWood

I'm trying to count the number of times a name appears in a column that is configured for contacts and is set to allow multiple contacts.

So using the Countif function, I can easily count up the number of times "John Doe" appears in a column...UNLESS....there's a cell that contains "John Doe" and "Jane Doe".

The Countif function doesn't recognize the "John Doe" in a cell if it's accompanied by another name in the same cell.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

Mike TV

@JWood

Try using COUNTIF(CONTAINS( that will work for multi-select values. Here's an example I wrote for a test sheet in the past:

=COUNTIF([Column4]:[Column4], CONTAINS("Gary", @cell))

JWood

https://community.smartsheet.com/discussion/comment/341940#Comment_341940

Thanks @Mike TV

Unfortunately the syntax you suggests just returns a 0. Does it matter if the cells are formatted for contacts and the name I'm trying to count is from a contact list?