Countif does not count cells that have . ( ) and other non aphabetic characters

[adrian.rolla]

Countif does not count cells that have . ( ) and other non aphabetic characters.

Lets use an example having the following data in colum A:

hello

hi.

hi.

how are you (hi)

how are you (hi)

how are you (hi)

and having the formula =countif(A:A,Ax) in each row of column B, where x is the row number, will calculate rows like this:

hello 1

hi. 0

hi. 0

how are you (hi) 0

how are you (hi) 0

how are you (hi) 0


instead of what should be:

hello 1

hi. 2

hi. 2

how are you (hi) 3

how are you (hi) 3

how are you (hi) 3

how can this bug be solved?

[mariosv]

Because this characters are used in the regular expressions.

Two options:

-Deactivate the use of regular expression in Menu/Tools/Option/Calc/calculate.

-Put an \ before every special character in the search expression.

Look in the help for regular expressions.

[adrian.rolla]

Thanks a lot for the help.
If I can make a suggestion, regular expression default should be off.
Basic users are not aware about regular expressions and understand this as malfuction, I consider that is error prone.
Nevertheless, thanks again for your help!!!