Counting number of occurrences of cell with alphanumeric characters in a range

[CoolAuto]

In F1 I have an alphanumeric entry - ABC123.
In range O6:O1005 I have results of a VLOOKUP from another worksheet. Hopefully all those match entry in F1.
To verify that using variations of =COUNTIF(O6:O1005,"="&F1) formula, however even when at least one in range O6:O1005 is a match to F1 - this formula returns zero.

 

[Fluff]

Try
=COUNTIF(O6:O1005,F1)

 

[CoolAuto]

Following turned out to solve the extra spaces issue

=SUMPRODUCT(--(TRIM(O6:O1005)=TRIM(F1)))