Answers. Relevance. Rating Newest Oldest. Best Answer: =COUNTIF(A1:A10,SA) will count the number of cells in the range A1 to A10 which contain the string SA. If you mean the number of times SA appears in a single cell, say A1, then you need a series of formulas to achieve this.f you're looking to find how many times SA occurs within one cell, you could try this... =LEN(A1)-LEN(SUBSTITUTE(A1,SA,1)) The formula substitutes all the occurences of SA within the text (A1) with a 1.