vlookup when value/text is not in left-most column

[farmerdave]

Hi, i have spent a day thinking about this, haven't found a solution.

I have a list of possible text values (cells B5:B223) and want to find if any of these values occur in a table_array (cells C5:H223) which has plenty of empty cells. My understanding is that vlookup will search the left-most column (C), but what if some values don't appear in column C but appear for the first time in column D or H?

My goal is to count the number of entries from column B that have at least one occurrence in the table_array.

This is what i have so far:

=IF(ISERROR(VLOOKUP(B5,$C$5:$H$223,1,FALSE))," ",VLOOKUP(B5,$C$5:$H$223,1,FALSE))

Any help greatly welcomed.