View Single Post
 
Old 03-20-2016, 04:29 PM
jenagain jenagain is offline Windows 8 Office 2010 64bit
Novice
 
Join Date: Mar 2016
Posts: 1
jenagain is on a distinguished road
Default excel formula to find most common words in data

I am looking for an excel formula to identify the most commonly occurring word within a range of cells when I don't know what words I'm looking for and the words may be in any position in the cell. For example, if my list contains the following:

United States of America
Constitution of the United States
The Declaration of Independence

I'm looking for a formula that tells me:

of x 3
the x 2
United x 2
States x 2
Declaration x 1
Independence x 1
America x 1
Constitution x 1

Real world application: I have a list of about 15,000 items with a description that contains a variable-length index number, a manufacturer name, and some text that may or may not be abbreviated or spelled correctly that is supposed to describe the item.

I can put a filter on and start guessing and find 'screw' or 'wire' and label them manually, but I get it down to about 5000 items and I run out of guesses and no longer find obvious repetitions when I visually skim the data. There should not be that many unique kinds of things in the list, so I'm looking for common words within the descriptions to help me identify what's left.

Thanks for any tips.
Reply With Quote