## See Also: [Count rows with not empty value][0]

---

Unfortunately, this is *functions as designed* from Google.  
<sup>Although I'm not sure why it's divergent from the way that [Excel calculates COUNTA][MS-COUNTA].</sup>

According to the [Google Spreadsheet Documentation on `COUNTA`][Google - COUNTA]:

> COUNTA counts all values in a dataset, including those which appear more than once and text values (**including zero-length strings** and whitespace).

Meaning that the only way to "make [the cells] completely empty" is to delete the entire contents, formula and all.  But fear not...

### Some workarounds:

1. *Hypothetically*, you should be able to do this with [`=COUNTIF(A3:A8,"<>"&"")`][Not Equal Blank], but Google spreadsheets doesn't support the ***not equal to*** operator in the [COUNTIF function][Google - COUNTIF] according to these forums: [1], [2], [3]

2. A workaround is to create a truthy or falsy array based on the condition and use SUMPRODUCT to count the truthy values like this:

        =SUMPRODUCT((A3:A8<>"")*1)

3. Another option you could pursue would be to [write a custom function][custom] and add it to Drive.  
  It's actually pretty easy to do so.  Go to Tools > Script Editor and add the following script:

    

        /**
         * Works like COUNTA except does not include null strings
         *
         * @param {cellRange} myArray The value or range to consider when counting.
         * @return Returns the a count of the number of values in a dataset.
         * @customfunction
         */
        function CountNotBlank(myArray) {
          var output = 0;
          for (i = 0; i < myArray.length; i++) { 
            if (myArray[i] != "") {
              output += 1
            }
          }
          return output;
        }
     
     Then use like this:

        =CountNotBlank(I31:I)


[MS-COUNTA]: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/excel-help/use-counta-to-count-nonblank-cells-HP010342340.aspx
[Google - COUNTA]: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093991?hl=en
[Google - COUNTIF]: https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093480?hl=en
[Not Equal Blank]: https://www.ablebits.com/office-addins-blog/2014/07/02/excel-countif-examples/

[0]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/43358591/1366033
[1]: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/zAT50FK9DDE
[2]: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/FIOttjtaPYY
[3]: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/docs/u_XdYZGCcrE

[custom]: https://developers.google.com/apps-script/guides/sheets/functions

I'm using the command `=COUNTA(I31:I)` to count all non-empty cells in the column. The cells in the column contain this line of code:

    =IF(ISNUMBER(D31), "X", "")

The result is that the cells are either an empty string (the line with add nothing `""`) or contain an `X`.

The problem now is that `COUNTA` counts all the cells after this procedure, empty or not. If I delete the long command line the cell is not counted and it works fine. So this long command line is adding something to the cell, so it appears *not-empty* even though it looks empty.

Any clues to what that is? My guess is that I should use some kind of `Null` operator instead of the `""` to add nothing to the cell.

**Note**: For some reason, this seems to work in a previous version of Google Spreadsheet I had.

As a *potential workaround*, I could replace `=COUNTA(I31:I)` by checking specifically for `x` with `=COUNTIF(I31:I;"X")`. But I'm still curious as to the problem with COUNTA. 

If it turns out that my cells are not empty 'enough' for this command, how can I then make them completely empty?