When is unique actually unique? Formula answer please.

[Tony Bradshaw]

I have an externally derived and enforced database reference key that uses a mixture of numeric and alpha characters to produce unique strings for database records. So far so good, it does work in their world and in mine other than when I want to check the occurrences of the key, say, in a list of calls where the key for the person will be repeated corresponding to the number of calls in a given period.
The problem I have is that all the Excel methods I have tried to count occurences are unable to distinguish between 2 codes that have the same characters but in one of them one or more characters is UPPER case and in the other LOWER case.
For eaxmple: WUKE0000000h and WUKE0000000H
Both are considered identical by COUNITF, by FREQUENCY and by various other devilishly clever formulae that I have found in various forums on-line.
In my database suppliers world these strings are NOT identical and refer to totally separate and different records, for example, 2 different individuals or 2 different places geographically far from each other and NOT to be confused.
I do not want to have to write VBA code or user-defined formulae as the answer.
Is there a simple Excel formula-driven answer that can distinguish these strings?

 

[GTO]

Try EXACT()

 

[cdchapman]

Try this array formula:

=SUM(--EXACT(B2,C2:C6))

where B2 contains the person key you want to find the occurrences of, and C2:C6 the range of person keys to search (adjust the range to suit).

Chris

 

[Tony Bradshaw]

Brilliant - it works. I knew there would be answer but I would have looked for a long time to find one this simple. All the other answers I found a) did not work and b) were fiendishly complicated by comparison.Thank you both.