Count rows in Microsoft Excel column

Question

I have a table that looks like this:

Column A

Dog     
Apple   

And some more words. But on the side of the table, I want to have a cell which tells me how many rows I have in Column A, and I want it to update as I add more rows. How could I do this using equations or functions?

Answer 1

=COUNTA(A:A)-1 will return the number of non-blank cells in Column A.

Answer 2

If you don't mind the header cell being counted you could just use:

=COUNTA(A:A)

Answer 3

If your rows contain text you will need {=COUNT(IF(A:A<>"",1,0))}

It needs to be entered as an array formula. You might also need to subtract some value from this to account for header rows.