title: Count amount of non-blank cells & if contains a certain character minus a value in excel
body: <p>I have a list of text values which I have used COUNTA to count the filled cells. I also need to identify if there is a "*", and if so minus the count by 0.5. </p>
  
  <p>So far I have tried (and a few variations of):</p>
  
  <pre><code> =IF(SEARCH("~*",C05:C52),COUNTA(C05:C52)-0.5,COUNTA(C05:C52))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But this comes up with #VALUE! - I've looked at similar examples but cant get this to work - I am obviously missing something obvious!</p>
  
  <p>Thanks in advance for your help!</p>