1. Copy the column with names into separate worksheet. Use Remove Duplicates on copied list.
2. Create a Pivot table to count names. Copy names from Pivot table to another location. Or simply use this Pivot whenever you need the Vendor count (you can set filters for Pivot too - e.g. by dates)
3. On another worksheet, create an ODBC query like
Code:
SELECT DISTINCT VendorNames From YourTable
where YourTable is your Excel table, and VendorNames the column with names in it.
or
Code:
SELECT VendorNames, Count VendorNames From YourTable GROUP BY VendorNames
You can set the query to be refreshed on Open, and you can refresh it manually whenever you want (right-click on query table, and select Refresh from dropdown menu).