Explanation
The COLUMNS function is fully automatic. When you provide a range to COLUMNS, it will return a count of all columns in the range. In the example, the formula in F6 returns 2, because there are 2 columns in the range B5:C10:
=COLUMNS(B5:C10) // count columns
COLUMNS counts the number of columns in any supplied range and returns a number as a result. For example, if we provide all of row 1 in a range, Excel returns 16,384 the total number of columns in an Excel worksheet.
=COLUMNS(1:1) // returns 16384
To count rows in a range, see the ROWS function.
Related formulas
Total rows in range
The ROWS function is fully automatic. When you provide a range to ROWS, it will return a count of all rows in the range. In the example, the formula in F5 returns 6, because there are 6 rows in the range B5:C10: =ROWS(B5:C10) // count rows ROWS counts the number of rows in any supplied range and...
Count cells in range
The goal is to count the number of cells in a given range, regardless of whether the cells are empty or not. Although Excel has several functions designed to count cells based on their contents, there is no built-in function for counting the total number of cells in a range. The classic solution is...
Related functions
COLUMNS Function
The Excel COLUMNS function returns the count of columns in a given reference. For example, COLUMNS(A1:C3) returns 3, since the range A1:C3 contains 3 columns.
