countif function excel 2007

[Dave H]

I have a spreadsheet that used to work perfectly, but now using excel 2007 the
countif function no longer works.
(I can get countif to work fine with a simple test using simple dummy data)
obviously the syntax has not changed, so it must be something to do with the
way the data is being handled.
I can do a work around using the (*) wildcard at the start and end of my
data so there must be hidden characters?
I have tried TRIm and CLEAN to no avail
any thoughts?
Dave H

 

[T. Valko]

There is a macro at this site that will "clean" the data:

http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/join.htm#trimall