Can I assign a value to a alphabetical character?

I am not well versed in Excel but I do use a spreadsheet to keep up with some of my payroll related duties.

I have set up a basic "calendar" to keep track of employee time usage (sick, vacation etc.) I have 31 fields across, 12 down. It is very basic...I use single characters "V" and "S" when an employee is off. I have another field where I enter the total which I am manually adding up.

Is there a way to formulate a field to equal the number of "v" or "S" in a particular row?

Hope that wasn't too confusing

Thanks,
Leslie

Hello Leslie, and welcome to the forum.

I have moved your thread from the Introduction area so that you'll start receiving help.

To start you off, have a look at the COUNTIF() function: http://www.excelfunctions.net/ExcelCountif.html

You can use: =COUNTIF(your range,"V") to count the number of V's in the specified range