I want to use the value in another cell to find the number of times it occurs in a range of cells. This is an example of the search.

=COUNTIF(Sheet1!B1:C5,ISNUMBER(SEARCH("string",SHE ET1!B1:C5)))

I want to look for "string" in range B1:C5 in SHEET1, and count the number of occurances.

This works if I type in "string." However, I want the expression to use the value column A of SHEET2 and put the resulting count in column B SHEET2. So, B1 would have the count of A1 in range SHEET1!B1:C5, and B2 would have the count of A2 in range SHEET1!B1:C5, and so on down the column. So, how do I stick the string that is in A as an expression in the column B?

I hope this is clear.