What COUNTIFS does
COUNTIFS counts records that meet more than one condition at the same time. It is the multi-criteria version of COUNTIF and is useful for reports, scorecards, and conditional summaries.
Practical examples
Count orders for one region and one status
=COUNTIFS(B2:B50,"West",C2:C50,"Open")
This counts only the rows where the region is West and the status is Open.
Count values above a threshold in one month
=COUNTIFS(A2:A50,"Jan",D2:D50,">=1000")
This counts January rows where the value in column D is at least 1000.
Common mistakes and notes
Every criteria range must be the same size
If one criteria range is B2:B50 and another is C2:C40, COUNTIFS can return incorrect results or errors.
Text criteria with operators need quotes
Conditions such as ">=1000" or "<>"&E2 must be written as text expressions. This is one of the most common COUNTIFS mistakes.
COUNTIFS uses AND logic across pairs
All criteria pairs must be true for a row to count. If you need OR logic, you usually combine multiple COUNTIFS formulas.