You are hitting some strange behavior of Sheets, quite possibly a bug. I will first describe a way to reproduce it, and then a way to avoid it.
To reproduce:
Put some text in cells A1 and A3, leaving A2 blank. In cell B1, enter =query(A1:A3, "select *"). The content of cells B1:B3 will now appear to be identical to A1:A3.
But B2 is not really blank. Specifically:
=isblank(B2) returns FALSE, while =isblank(A2) is TRUE=istext(B2) returns TRUE, while =istext(A2) is FALSE=counta(B1:B3) returns 3, while =counta(A1:A3) is 2. =countif(B1:B3, "<>") returns 3, while =countif(A1:A3, "<>") is 2.
To avoid
Don't use countif or counta on the results of query (at least until this bug is fixed). As an alternative, use filter command to apply the criteria, and then counta to count the (nonempty) results. Thus, instead of
=Countifs(Query!$B$2:$B$500, "221*", Query!$E$2:$E$500, "<>")
use
=counta(filter(Query!$B$2:$B$500, regexmatch(Query!$B$2:$B$500, "^221")*len(Query!$E$2:$E$500)))
which is admittedly more complex but gets correct results. There are two filter criteria, which are imposed as logical AND by multiplication:
- column B entry matches the regular expression
^221 (equivalent to wildcard pattern 221*)
- column E entry has positive length -- this is a robust check that is not affected by the strange behavior of
query.
Since in the filtered results, the column B is guaranteed to be nonempty, counta will return the number of all rows that match the filter.
An alternative, slightly shorter formula with the same result:
=sum(arrayformula(regexmatch(Query!$B$2:$B$500, "^221")*(len(Query!$E$2:$E$500)>0)))
This evaluates the two criteria as True/False, coerces them to 0-1 integers by multiplication, and sums the results.
Best Answer
It seems you can't change query results or edit cells.