How to combine counta with countifs in excel / google sheets ?

Question

I would like to count the total number of cells that meet these two criteria:

Column A with text and Column B with empty cells. So let’s say Column A says “hi” and column B is empty, the count would be 1 

Please help I can’t find help anywhere

Answer 1

=COUNTIFS(range1,critera1,range2,critera2)

Or for your example.

=CountifS(A:A,"Hi",B:B,"") 

Additionally, if you mean to count NON BLANK cells in column A, use this

=COUNTIFS(A:A,"<>",B:B,"")

Answer 2

What you are trying to do is unclear. Are you 

only wanting to count those items in A column 

if the neighboring cell to that item is empty? 

I would do it this way:  

=COUNTIF(B1:B1000, "", A1:A1000)  

The above says to count only the values in the 

range A1:A1000, where the corresponding cells 

in the range B1:B1000 are equal to "" (null).