How do I get countifs to select all non-blank cells in Excel?

Question

How do I get countifs to select all non-blank cells? I have two other criteria, so using counta alone is not an option.

Using istext makes the result give 0, always. Excel gives an error when using <>"" as a criterion.

Answer 1

Use a criteria of "<>". It will count anything which isn't an empty cell, including #NAME? or #DIV/0!. As to why it works, damned if I know, but Excel seems to understand it.

Note: works nicely in Google Spreadsheet too