I'm on Windows 7 (64bit) using Office 2010.



Question One:
I have a set of journal titles which people have used, and the format is as follows (this is an excerpt of some 400 entries)

Sedimentology
Sedimentology
Sedimentology
Sedimentology
Senckenbergiana Maritima
Tellus A
Terra Nova
Terra Nova
Trudy Instituta Okanologii
Vie et Milieu
Polar Biology
Polar Biology
Polar Biology
Marine Biology
Marine Biology
Ophelia

How do I could the number of times Polar Biology (as an example) was used? Bearing in mind that some journals have been used 20-30 times, so counting is a very last resort!

Question Two:
In another excel spreadsheet I have a list of single digits and digit ranges. eg.
1-4
5
6
7-12
13
14-19
etc
How do I format the cells so the ranges don't turn into dates? If I change all cells into text I get a huge list of errors.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi,

Q1 The formula approach would be to use COUNTIF(). Alternatively you can use a Pivot Table

Q2 You need to format the cells as Text before you enter the digit ranges. If these digit ranges are going to be referenced or used to calculate buckets elsewhere, then you would be better off putting the start/end values in separate cells

eg

A
1
5
6
7
13
14
etc

__________________
Colin

RAD Excel Blog

Thanks very much Colin, that's very helpful.
I have actually turned off the error messages for numbers as text, as I'm often just wanting them as such, so that problem is sort of solved.

As for the first thing, I will have to read up on that, as I'm not so knowledgeable about pivot tables and suchlike.