Excel..How to sum differant alpha items in a string of cells

Question

I am trying to write a formula that will count the cells that have an alpha entry requardless of what that alph character is. It is for use by our church's pastor to keep records of his visits to shut-ins. The challange is to sum those visits into a single total. Actually, our church is using Office 2000. I thought I coulkd use the formula ...Excel formula =COUNTIF()  but if it will allow diffant alpha values to be recognized as a single value I don't know how to write it.

Total would be ....=COUNTIF(B3:E3,"???") ....where ??? might be any one or more differant alpha characters. In a nut shell how can I count a cell as "1" if it has any thing populating the cell?

Pastor's Visitation Records
Name	1/1/2011	1/8/2011	1/15/2011	Nth	Total
John	V	V-C			2
Pete	C		V		2
Sam		V			1
Mary	CH	E	H		2

Answer 1

Try =COUNTA(B3:E3)

Answer 2

Hi,

Try this

=COUNTA(B3:E3)