Is there an alternative to COUNTIFS function?

I'm doing a bit of data mining to come up with our customers' profiles. The data I'm working with has over 3,000 customers listed.

In order to establish our customers profiles, I'm using the function COUNTIFS which allows me to know how many of those 3,000-plus customers meet certain criterias. I use many criterias to sort the customers. Here are a few examples:

• Gender (Male, Female)
• Age Group (18-24, 25-29, 30-34, 35-39, 40-44, 45-49, 50-54, 55-59, 60-64, 65-69, 70 and over)
• Marital Status (Single, Common-Law, Married, Divorced/Seperated, Widowed, Unknown)
• Has kids (Yes, No)
• Etc.

Using COUNTIFS function is great because it allows me to know exactly how many people match all the criterias that I've selected. For example:

• Male, 18-24, Single, No kids = 25
• Female, 30-34, Married, Has kids = 34
• Female, 70 and over, Widowed, No Kids = 7

MY PROBLEM

My problem with using COUNTIFS function is that ALL the criterias have to be filled-in for the function to make the calculation. I'd love to be able to select only a few criterias and still have the function tell me how many people match those criterias. For example:

• Male, 18-24, Single, No kids = 25
• Male, 18-24, Single = 30
• Male, 18-24 = 40
• Male = 200

Is there an alternative to COUNTIFS or some way around it that would give me the flexibility I'm looking for.

Thanks!