COUNTIF Strings > whatever

[Alan Beban]

Where can I learn about how COUNTIF treats Strings with comparison operators? In particular, how it compares strings and numeric values?

[ffffloyd]

I always convert a numeric value to a string before comparing, adding a default (or calculated) number of leading zeroes first.

For example:

 A       Z
--- ... ---
 42     =IF(ISNUMBER($A1),RIGHT("00000"&$A1,5),$A1)
  3     00003
XYZ     XYZ
  2     00002
  1     00001
999     00999
ABC     ABC
333     00333

That way, you are now always comparing strings to strings and the results are more predictable.