complicated count

[Guest]

I'm doing an online schedule and need to count how many shifts people work.
Each month is a sheet and each employee is on the same row each month.

They will either have A (shift 1) B (shift 2) X (off) H (holiday) ill
(sick day). Right now i've created a bunch of countif functions
=COUNTIF(B4:F4,"A*") then repeated the same thing for B and so on. Is there
a quicker/easier way to get it to count A* or B*. The logic would be
something like =COUNTIF(B4:F4,("A*" OR "B*"))

Thanks Ian.

 

[Dave Peterson]

=SUM(COUNTIF(B4:F4,{"A*","B*"}))

0r you could count each:
=countif(b4:f4,"A*") + countif(b4:f4,"b*")

 

[Bernard Liengme]

Am I missing something or could you use
=COUNTIF(B4:F4,"A*") +COUNTIF(B4:F4,"B*")
Have you looked a Pivot Tables?
best wishes

 

[Guest]

too easy -- overthinking it. I'll try the pivot too. thx. Ian.