Count frequency of text in spreadsheet

How do you count the frequency of a word appearing in a spreadheet?

E.G.
My spreadsheet lists several institutions and the last time or next time they were or should be “Checked”

There are 4 columns with months (January-December) listed for reference on when each item should be checked.

How do I search the spreadsheet and get a sum of how many times “January” for example shows up in the sheet?

I have tried the SumIF and CountIF functions and I keep getting error messages in response in both in Excell and Open Office Calc.

I have also tried the “Find All” function which highlights everything but wont quantify…

This is such a simple function I was hoping for a simple way to get to it but have been having so much trouble.

(I am also a spreadsheet newbie- simple walkthroughs appreciated)

Can you share a file with a sample data on where you want to do the calculation?

To get a sum of how many times “January” shows up in the sheet, you could type a formula such as:

=COUNTIF(A1:Z9999;"January")

The first parameter of the COUNTIF() function specifies the range of cells to be searched. In this example it is assumed that your sheet does not contain any column beyond Z, nor any row beyond 9999.