Excel how to SUM a column filled with Yes’s and No’s

microsoft excelworksheet-function

I'm not summing numbers, but rather the number of occurrences of a keyword.

How is that done?

Sample Data:

Item  Completed
---------------
a     No
b     No
c     Yes
d     Yes
e     No

Total Completed: ?

This should do the job:

=COUNTIF(B2:B5,"Yes")

Use SUMPRODUCT to wrap your LEFT formula:

=SUMPRODUCT(--(LEFT(A1:A3,1)))

The -- does the same as VALUE(). It turns the text value that is returned by the LEFT() function into a number.