blanks counting as text in =COUNTIF?

[evanlamarr88]

I recently downloaded a file from my firms Windows-based CRM and tried to run a count of all the email addresses. Somehow, all the blanks without email addresses counted as text in an =COUNTIF function, and also in the status bar in the bottom right. However, if I ran the formula, selected a blank cell, and then hit the Delete button, the formula would update -1! I "F2"ed the blank cell, and there wasn't a space or anything in the cell. I worked around by filtering all the blank cells, selecting the top cell, hitting CTRL+DOWN to select all the cells, and then hitting the delete button. But what was going on in the first place??

 

[vletm]

evanlamarr88
Could You upload a sample Excel-file?
Which has same kind of case as Your original file
... which works as You've written above.

 

[pecoflyer]

Try the CODE function on one of the blank cells to see what it returns and, by all means, attach a file as requested