Counting cells and ignoring references

[coachdave]

Hello,

I have a range of cells (B6:M6) and I want to count how many have data. My problem is that all of the cells reference cells on another worksheet. Every cell starts out like =Bethlehem!B6. I want to ignore cells that have a reference in it when I count. I know how to do it if you want to ignore these cells as follows: =countif(b6:m6,"<> 0"). Those cell references return a 0 if they have no data in them. However, a user might actually enter a 0 in the referenced cell and I need to count that one. The above formula would exclude it. Any suggestions?

Thank you very much,

Dave