Areas function

This article describes the formula syntax and usage of the AREAS function in Microsoft Excel.

Description

Returns the number of areas in a reference. An area is a range of contiguous cells or a single cell.

Syntax

AREAS(reference)

The AREAS function syntax has the following argument:

• Reference    Required. A reference to a cell or range of cells and can refer to multiple areas. If you want to specify several references as a single argument, then you must include extra sets of parentheses so that Microsoft Excel will not interpret the comma as a field separator. See the following example.

Example

Copy the example data in the following table, and paste it in cell A1 of a new Excel worksheet. For formulas to show results, select them, press F2, and then press Enter. If you need to, you can adjust the column widths to see all the data.

Formula	Description	Result
=AREAS(B2:D4)	Number of areas in the range	1
=AREAS((B2:D4,E5,F6:I9))	Number of areas in the range	3
=AREAS(B2:D4 B2)	Number of areas in the range	1