frequency of string

[flyonthewall]

i don't know of an elegant/dynamic way to handle the below (simplified) problem. col A will be different dates, sometimes the same dates but i doubt that matters. the focus is col B which can have any number of different names.

the goal, if possible, would be to dynamically output the frequency of a string in col b.

is this possible or can someone think of a crafty way to accomplish it?

<blockquote>
DATA (csv)
-----------------
date1, joe
date2, sally
date3, rick
date4, sally
date5, sally
date6, joe
date7, sally
etc...

DESIRED OUTPUT
----------------------
sally, 4
joe, 2
rick, 1
</blockquote>

 

[Tuelor]

Would having a list of names in another column, and a countif do it?

D

 

[JackDanIce]

You could apply an advanced filter to column B to identify all the unique values and then next to that a COUNTIF function against your original data to count the frequencies

 

[flyonthewall]

BIG thanks.

for anyone coming to this later, exactly what was said above is what i needed to do.

col b was the data with any number of random strings
col c i created a filter seperating the unique values in column b
col d was =countif(b:b, c1) etc to match the unique string against the full list.

thanks so much.

 

[JackDanIce]

Glad it worked, you're welcome