Finding duplicate text in a single column containing multiple words in each cell

[helpmeob1wan]

I have a spreadsheet with authors of articles in one column. Many of the authors have several entries, and there are 100 rows total.

For example

[ Author t, Author u, Author v]
[ Author x, Author Y, Author z]
[ Author A, Author b, author x]

I have to find out how many times the authors are repeated i.e. how many authors wrote more than one article in the list. One way to do it is to manually go through each name 'CTRL + F' it and see how many other times it appears in the sheet.

Is there any automated way I can do this that will save me time?

Thanks for any help in advance.

 

[igold]

Hi helpmeob1wan,

Welcome to the MrExcel board.

See if this comes close to doing what you want. This is assuming that you are showing the brackets [] strictly to represent that those values appear in a single cell and are not part of the actual data. Also the code is assuming that your data is starting on row 1.

Sub AuthorCt()


    Dim Lines As Variant, uLines As Variant
    Dim lRow As Long, x As Long, i As Long, ct As Double
    Dim alls As String, str As String
    
    lRow = Cells(Rows.Count, 1).End(xlUp).Row
    For i = 1 To lRow
        alls = alls & "," & Range("A" & i) & ", "
    Next
    alls = Mid(alls, 2)
    alls = Replace(alls, ", ,", ", ")
    Lines = Split(alls, ", ")
    
    With CreateObject("Scripting.Dictionary")
    For x = LBound(Lines) To UBound(Lines) - 1
        If Not IsMissing(Lines(x)) Then .Item(Lines(x)) = 1
    Next
    uLines = .Keys
    End With
    
    For i = LBound(uLines) To UBound(uLines)
        For x = LBound(Lines) To UBound(Lines)
            If uLines(i) = Lines(x) Then
                ct = ct + 1
            End If
        Next
        str = str & vbNewLine & uLines(i) & " was found " & ct & " times."
        ct = 0
    Next
    str = Mid(str, 2)
    MsgBox str
    
End Sub

 

[jtakw]

Hi,

You can do Text to Columns to separate the Text string using the , (comma) as delimiter, then build a list with All Authors, then use COUNTIF.

Or, without Text to Columns, build a list with All Authors and use COUNTIF with Wildcards.