Create a Timetable where You Can Count Certain Lessons

Made with Craiyon

=COUNTIF($A$1:$G$15,"*CLASSNAME*")

At the beginning of the school year, teachers have to put together their own schedules. This looks different depending on the school and the subject that the teacher teaches.

Due to my split roles, I had to have a count of each of the classes I taught. I could have simply counted, but since the timetable was on a spreadsheet I wanted to find a way to use a formula to find the answer. 

What I came up with was the above formula using the COUNTIF function. 

The orange part tells the formula where to look, and the green part tells the formula what to look for. The asterisks tell the formula to search for anything with CLASSNAME -- including within words. (This can get tricky with a class such as PE.)  

Now, this only counts each instance of CLASSNAME, and next year I will probably add a column with the minutes next to CLASSNAME so I can get a more accurate picture of what I am doing with my time.

This could also be accomplished with the COUNTA formula. (COUNTA counts text strings.)