Excel COUNTIF special characters

Question

Is it possible to count specific special characters in a whole column?

I am trying to count all the commas " , " in a column and this is what i am using:

=COUNTIF(D3:D45, "=,")

The problem is that this only counts the commas that are alone in a cell. If i add anything else to the cell, before or after the comma, it will not count.

Examples of the cells that i am counting:

Cell#1: 73(1), 210(5), 422(6),

Cell#2: 862(51),

Cell#3: 26(3), 156(6), 451(19),

The expected output is 7 The actual output is 0

Answer 1

You can try the array formula:

=SUMPRODUCT(LEN(D3:D45)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(D3:D45,",","")))