The purpose of the COUNT function in Excel is to count the number of cells that contain numeric values in a range of cells. However, based on the options you've provided, the most fitting option would be:
To count the number of cells that meet specific range criteria.
This is slightly misleading since COUNT itself simply counts numeric cells, while functions like COUNTIF or COUNTIFS are used for counting based on criteria.
If you are looking for the general functionality of COUNT, it's primarily to just count numeric entries in a specified range.