How to count text as a number - Exclude duplicates

[Lmaonade]

This is probably very simple for most people but I want to have a total number of names from a list but if the name comes up more than once I only want to count it once.

For example:

A 1 Ryan 2 Bob 3 Jim 4 Dan 5 Andy 6 Luke 7 Peter 8 Ryan 9 Andy 10 Stephen 11 Mike 12 Mike 13 Eddy 14 Jim 15 Paul <tbody> </tbody>

<tbody>
</tbody>

I want a formula in another cell to count total number of people. So I'd want it the answer to return 11 as there are 11 unique names.

Thanks,
Andy

 

[njimack]

=sumproduct(1/countif(a1:a15,a1:a15))

 

[Lmaonade]

Hi njimack,

Thanks a lot! This works! BUT, I also have some blanks in my spreadsheet which will be filled in as time goes on. Is there a way to have it disregard blanks, otherwise I get an error return (#DIV/0!)

 

[Aladin Akyurek]

Control+shift+enter, not just enter:

=SUM(IF(FREQUENCY(IF(1-($A$1:$A$15=""),MATCH($A$1:$A$15,$A$1:$A$15,0)),ROW($A$1:$A$15)-ROW($A$1)+1),1))
​

which is by far the most efficient formula for unique counting.
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