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At 19:42 19/12/2015 +0200, Hylton Conacher wrote:
Running :O 5.0.3.2 on IMac and have seen there is a 5.0.4 update, however, perhaps my issue does not require an update.

Anyway, the formula involves COUNTIF with the search range on another sheet and the search criteria in a cell adjacent to the countif formula.
=COUNTIF(Data.$C$4:C$492,$B17)
Each search criteria (B17), is text consisting of spaces, numbers and special characters [e.g.] BLUE GUM LANE (NO'S 1 - 17)

On my version of LO this formula displays a zero as the count of the search criteria however on reviewing the Data sheet, I can identify at least one exact replica within range, yet it is not counted? Any ideas to get the correct answer of the number of times a field appears?

There are simple ways to debug problems such as this - which you can do with your actual spreadsheet but you deprive anyone offering to help you from doing! o Set up a model spreadsheet with very simple entries so that something works - to establish that you understand exactly what COUNTIF() does. o Make a copy of your real spreadsheet and simplify it - removing material and simplifying the data - until it works. Whatever you changed last to make the function spring into life will be the culprit.

As the help text explains about COUNTIF(), "[t]he search supports regular expressions." With regular expression enabled, the parentheses in your example data are interpreted as marking off the enclosed text as a reference. This can be referred to later in a search string (or in a replacement string, where relevant). This means that the parentheses are punctuation within the search string and not part of it: your example string would match "BLUE GUM LANE NO'S 1 - 17" but not "BLUE GUM LANE (NO'S 1 ­ 17)".

If this is the problem, there are two alternative techniques to solve it. Either: o Disable regular expressions in formulae by removing the tick from Tools | Options... | LibreOffice Calc | Calculate | Enable regular expressions in formulae. (That will be Preferences... on the Mac, won't it?)
Or:
o Escape the parentheses by preceding them by backslashes in the search string: BLUE GUM LANE \(NO'S 1 - 17\) - so that they are treated as nothing more than the simple text characters you mean them to be.

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker


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