Keep formula unchanged when row is deleted

Question

I am trying to keep the count of how many cells are not empty on a worksheet. We often need to delete rows, but when we do the formula range changes. I always need it to be the cells you see in the formula.

=COUNTA($A$2:$A$132)

Is there a way to adjust this so that the cell references never change when a row is deleted?

Answer 1

Use INDEX():

=COUNTA(INDEX($A:$A,1):INDEX($A:$A,132))