Talk:Documentation/Calc Functions/COLUMNS

(1) Summary. Suggest changing “Returns” to “determines” and deleting “or array”.

(2) Returns. Suggest changing “whole number” to “integer” and changing “1” to “0”.

(3) Arguments, Array. Suggest changing to the following - “Array is a reference to a cell (for example, “$Sheet1.C24”), a cell area (for example, “$Sheet1.C24:$Sheet1.C48”), the name of a named range or a database range, or a constant array (for example, “{1, 3, 5, 7}”).”

(4) Arguments, 1st bullet. Suggest replacing with the following text – “If the argument is not a valid reference to a spreadsheet area or a constant array (for example, it is simply a number or a string) then the function returns an error value.”

(5) Arguments, proposed new bullet. “If an attempt is made to pass multiple references to COLUMNS, it returns an error. Using the tilde reference concatenation operator is not possible so, for example, the formula =COLUMNS(A1:B2~C1:D4) returns an error. Similarly, if a named range comprises more than one area, then an error is returned if it is passed as an argument to COLUMNS.”.

(6) Additional details. Please add a note that this function counts columns that have been hidden.

(7) Additional details. Please add a note that the value returned by this function is not dependent on the contents of the cells in a referenced cell area.

(8) Examples, general. Please include extra examples reflecting that =COLUMNS() returns 0 and =COLUMNS({10,20,30,40}) returns 4.

(9) Examples, 3rd example. I am not keen on using “Rabbit” as the range’s name!

--Stevefanning (talk) 2020-12-07T20:33:05 (UTC)