Re: Looking for a function that will count the first instance of a

What you want to do is count the unique items. Try this:

=SUMPRODUCT((A1:A100<>"")/COUNTIF(A1:A100,A1:A100&""))

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Biff
Microsoft Excel MVP


"ibvalentine" <ibvalentine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:5D73F497-87EE-4067-BEF5-9BC079EBACDC@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I have a column in a list that contains types of expenses. I want to count
how many different types of expenses I have. In other words, if one of the
expense types is "office" and there are several instances of "office", I
just
want to count "office" once. If "fees" is in the column several times, I
just
want to count fees once and so on.

The way I do it now is to use the Subtotal feature to group the expenses,
and then click on the level 2 button. The level 2 subtotals will return
just
one instance of each type. I then copy them and use paste special to paste
the values in cells off to the side. I can then use the count function to
count each type of expense.

So I am wondering if there is a better way or if there is a function that
will count just one instance of a group within a field.



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