Displaying total results of channel entries

Question

I'm trying to get this to display a the total results of a count just once. So if there are 120 results, have it output "120". Instead it shows each line 1,2,3,etc. and count == "1" displays nothing.

{if count == 0}
{exp:channel:entries channel="people" search:people_alpha="={segment_3}" orderby="people_lname" sort="asc"}
<h3>{absolute_count}</h3>
{/exp:channel:entries}
{/if}

Thanks in advance for any help on this

Answer 1

The variable which returns the total amount of entries is {absolute_results}, not {absolute_count}.

{exp:channel:entries channel="people" search:people_alpha="={segment_3}"}
    {if count == 1}
    <h3>{absolute_results}</h3>
    {/if}
{/exp:channel:entries}

Answer 2

I can't tell because you didn't post enough code, but it looks like you have a {exp:channel:entries} loop inside of another loop, possible another channel loop. This isn't going to fly; the parse order of the templating engine won't render the output you want properly. You need to extract that inner loop and put it in an embed.

http://ee2docs.com/templates/embedding.html

An embed allows your inner loop to be parsed separately from the outer loop.