COUNTIF...Miscounting Unique String

[Alex O]

I can't believe I have to ask this, but why is COUNTIF treating these two obviously different strings as if they match? I'm attempting to create a unique key for each transaction, which I thought was easy enough. Clearly there's something I'm missing here?? Any insight would be appreciated....

DP REPORT - MASTER RECORD

	G	H	I	J
332	$400.00	11/27/2018	4341610001914190400	1
333	$550.00	11/27/2018	4341610001914190550	1

<colgroup><col style="width: 30px; font-weight: bold;"><col style="width: 140px;"><col style="width: 140px;"><col style="width: 281px;"><col style="width: 112px;"></colgroup><tbody>
</tbody>

Formeln der Tabelle

Zelle Formel I332 =IF(B332="","",B332&F332&G332) J332 =COUNTIF($I$4:$I$515,I332)-1 I333 =IF(B333="","",B333&F333&G333) J333 =COUNTIF($I$4:$I$515,I333)-1 <tbody> </tbody>

<tbody>
</tbody>

 

[6StringJazzer]

COUNTIF thinks they are numbers and Excel only keeps the first 15 digits of numbers. I do not know why it does this, especially since you must have column I formatted as Text.

Try this instead:

J332 =SUMPRODUCT(--($I$4:$I$515=I332))-1

J333 =SUMPRODUCT(--($I$4:$I$515=I333))-1

 

[Alex O]

That solved it! I was unaware of "Excel only keeps the first 15 digits of numbers." Learned something new...
Thanks for the assistance...much appreciated!

 

[6StringJazzer]

You are welcome!

Yes, this limitation makes it notoriously tricky to work with credit card numbers. You have to manage them as text, which is OK since you don't need to do arithmetic on them anyway. (I say "limitation" because every computer has to have a limit on how many digits it can retain, and it's a very reasonable limitation.)

There are some Excel functions, including COUNTIF, that treat these long strings as numbers, even though they are otherwise treated as text. Some folks call this a bug but it's been this way through several versions of Excel so I would conclude that Microsoft thinks it's a feature.