We've now come full circle. Here's the original formula applied to that data:

      --A-- -B-- -C-- --D-- E --------------------F--------------------
  1    234A N333 4T41  7657 4 E1 and down: =COUNTA(A1:B1)*COUNTA(C1:D1)
  2    11C2       321  3T27 2                                          
  3         L954  989       1                                          
  4              56D1 297-1 0                                          
  5   87000 P199            0                                          
  6    D992                 0                                          
  7    Z222      3391       1
Rows 1, 2, 3, & 7 are non-zero.