Countif problem

Hello all,
I'm having an issue trying to get a countif of a column. Essentially the column is populated with one of 6 values. They are all text values such as FTA, FTD, FTE, etc etc. Basically it doesn't recognize any of the cells in the column as what it is. I can have a cell that's displaying PTE and do an IF = PTE ,1,0 and it will display a 0. If I go into the cell and manually type the PTE in it displays a 1. No formatting options seem to change the outcome, even copying the entire column and pasting it as a value does not seem to alleviate the situation. I cannot for the life of me figure out what excel actually thinks the cell value is.

Any help would be appreciated.

Often, the error is an extra space at the end of the value. If Excel is reading A1 as "PTE ", and B1 has =IF(A1="PTE",1,0), it will return a 0 because the two aren't equal. Test the lengths of the first column with =Len(A1) and drag down.

Edit: Just a hair too slow, I guess.

Ah yes, the spaces, now I feel silly for not thinking of that first lol. Thank you.