Skip to content
Free Excel Tutorials
  • Home
  • Excel For Beginners
  • Excel Intermediate
  • Advanced Excel For Experts

Data Analysis

  • Create Scatter Chart in Excel
  • How to create running total in an Excel Table
  • Conditional Formatting New Rule with Formulas in Excel
  • Conditional Formatting Icon Sets Examples in Excel
  • Randomize/ Shuffle List in Excel

References

  • Merge tables with VLOOKUP in Excel
  • How to use Excel FORMULATEXT function
  • How to calculate two-way lookup VLOOKUP in Excel Table
  • How to use Excel VLOOKUP Function
  • Find Closest Match in Excel Using INDEX, MATCH, ABS and MIN functions

Data Validations

  • How To Create Drop-down List in Excel
  • Excel Data validation no punctuation
  • Excel Data validation date in next 30 days
  • Excel Data validation require unique number
  • Excel Data validation date in specific year

Count unique values in a range with COUNTIF in Excel

by

This tutorial shows how to Count unique values in a range with COUNTIF in Excel. using the example below;

Formula

=SUMPRODUCT(1/COUNTIF(data,data))

Explanation

If you need to count the number of unique values in a range of cells (named “data” in the example below), you can use a formula that uses COUNTIF and SUMPRODUCT.

How the formula works

Working from the inside out, COUNTIF looks inside the data range and counts the number of times that each individual value appears in data. The result is an array of numbers that might look something like this: {3;3;3;2;2;3;3;3;2;2}.

After COUNTIF is finished the results are used as a divisor with 1 as the numerator. Values that appear in data once appear in the array as 1, but values that appear multiple times will appear as fractional values that correspond to the multiple. (i.e. a value that appears 5 times in data will generate 5 items in the array with a value of 1/5 = .2).

Finally, the SUMPRODUCT function sums all values in the array and returns the result.

Handling blank cells

If data might contain blank cells, you need to adjust the formula as follows:

=SUMPRODUCT(1/COUNTIF(data,data&""))

The data&”” expression prevents zeros from ending up in the array created by COUNTIF when there are blank cells in data. It does this by ensuring that the criteria for an empty cell is “”, and not zero. This is important, because a zero in the divisor will throw a #DIV/0 error. So this version of the formula won’t throw an error when there are blank cells, but it will include blank cells in the count. If you want to exclude blank cells in the count, use:

=SUMPRODUCT((data<>"")/COUNTIF(data,data&""))

Slow Performance?

This is a cool and elegant formula, but it calculates much more slowly than formulas that use FREQUENCY to count unique values. For larger data sets, you may want to switch to a formula based on the FREQUENCY function.

Post navigation

Previous Post:

How to use Excel CHOOSE Function

Next Post:

Customize Ribbon In Excel

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Learn Basic Excel

Ribbon
Workbook
Worksheets
Format Cells
Find & Select
Sort & Filter
Templates
Print
Share
Protect
Keyboard Shortcuts

Categories

  • Charts
  • Data Analysis
  • Data Validation
  • Excel Functions
    • Cube Functions
    • Database Functions
    • Date and Time Functions
    • Engineering Functions
    • Financial Functions
    • Information Functions
    • Logical Functions
    • Lookup and Reference Functions
    • Math and Trig Functions
    • Statistical Functions
    • Text Functions
    • Web Functions
  • Excel VBA
  • Excel Video Tutorials
  • Formatting
  • Grouping
  • Others

Logical Functions

  • IF with boolean logic in Excel
  • How to use Excel AND Function
  • How to use Excel TRUE Function
  • IFERROR function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • SWITCH function example in Excel

Date Time

  • Excel Date & Time Functions Example
  • Convert text timestamp into time in Excel
  • Generate series of dates by weekends in Excel
  • MONTH function: Description, Usage, Syntax, Examples and Explanation
  • Get month from date in Excel

Grouping

  • Calculate conditional mode with criteria in Excel
  • Group times into unequal buckets in Excel
  • Group times into 3 hour buckets in Excel
  • Running count group by n size in Excel
  • Categorize text with keywords in Excel

General

  • How to generate random number between two numbers in Excel
  • How to choose page/paper size in Excel before Printing
  • Mark Workbook as Final in Excel
  • AutoFit Column Width, AutoFit Row Height in Excel
  • Using Existing Templates in Excel
© 2023 xlsoffice . All Right Reserved. | Teal Smiles | Abbreviations And Their Meaning