Non-numerical Histogram

[chix]

Ok, Here's the thing...

I've got a long list of text values, and I want to plot the frequency of them,

The thing is, the text is brought in from access, and will be constantly changing.

So basically, I need excel to look down one column, and say 'there are 20 'Metals', 15 'plastics and 10 'Woods' and then plot them in a graph, with metal wood and plastic along the bottom, and frequency up the side. (but in the future, new text could appear, like 'Stone' that needs to automatically appear on the x-axis. i.e. I don't want to specify the values, just for excel to look and find them, and group them)


I know it needs to be a histogram, but the excel histogram won't accept text values, only numerical!

 

[Lewiy]

Welcome to the board!

Have you considered using a pivot table for this?

 

[chix]

Thanks!

nope, how would that work?

 

[Gerald Higgins]

Select your data (highlight it) and invoke the Pivot Table Wizard.

You can then construct a table something like this

Metal 20
Plastic 15
Wood 10

and you can then refresh your data when required, to add in new values automatically.

 

[chix]

Done it, ta.