Countif Function where criterion is content of a cell

Hi All,

I need some help with a countifs functions

I want the formula to provide me with the count of the cells that contain a specific text.

Is there a way to point directly to the cell that contains that text rather than spell it out ?

For example

=COUNTIF([Column A]:[Column A], "Text") This works fine, but I would want the formula to be something like

=COUNTIF([Column A]:[Column A], <Cell Content>)

The reason for this is that it will be easier to scale it throughout the text to count different cells content without having to spell it each time...

Thank you

Stefano