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Home > Archive > MOS > March 2002 > Puzzled about entering data in Excel
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Puzzled about entering data in Excel
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| shaxx 2002-03-02, 11:47 am |
| Sorry, I just know the very basics about Excel so I appologize for asking a stupid question. I'm trying to do a spreadsheet at work where I keep up with all our computer operating system licenses. Anyway If I have a column with text data in it can I get a total of the text data, For example, if the cells in column "A" have the text "Windows Professional 2000" in them is there a way of totaling how many cells have the text "WIndows Professional 2000" in them? Let me take it one step farther. Say in the cells in column "A" I have a mixture of cells with either the text "WIndows Professional 2000" , "Windows ME" and "Windows 98". Is there anyway to get a total on how many cells say "WIndows Professional 2000","Windows ME" and "Windows 98". If so how. This whould be very helpful with keeping track of my operating system totals.
Thanks
Thanks | |
| dagger 2002-03-02, 2:39 pm |
| You can sort that column.
Once the column is sorted
you will be able to see
how many of each operating system
exists (just by reading the cell numbers)
Each operating system will be in order
alphabetically.
That should help for starters. | |
| berg891832 2002-03-03, 5:52 pm |
| Checkout this solution. Let's say you have a column of Movie Categories entered in the range B2:B10 and the cell entry CATEGORY in cell B1. Some are Action, some are Drama, and some are Comedy. You want to know how many movies of each category you have. You can use the COUNTIF function. The COUNTIF function counts how many cells contain certain criteria. For example, in the movie Category column, if you wanted to count only the Action movies, you go to some empty cell and key =COUNTIF(B2:B10,"Action") and hit ENTER. After enter, 4 displays because you have 4 categories in the range that say Action. You would just repeat the same function for Drama and Comedy.
Hope this helped.
Bill Bergquist, MOUS MI
www.msofficetraing.com
berg891832@hotmail.com | |
| berg891832 2002-03-03, 5:56 pm |
| If you want, e mail me and I will send you a sample file of this very function.
Bill | |
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| Hey Thanks!!! The COUNTIF statement works perfectly. Let me ask one more question. Is there any way to set my search range to infinite...ie to search the whole column so I don't have to worry about my database expanding past my search range?...."For example, in the movie Category column, if you wanted to count only the Action movies, you go to some empty cell and key =COUNTIF(B2:B10,"Action") and hit ENTER".....Say in the example you provided is there any way to set the COUNTIF statement to search the entire column "B" so I would not have to worry about my entry "B11" expanding past my search range? I guess an easy way out is to just set my search range past the amount of entries I would need. Thanks agian for your help.  | |
| mlstyles 2002-03-03, 9:13 pm |
| Use =COUNTIF(B:B,"Text") where Text is the label you wish to count and B:B is the column the text populates. The quotes are also necessary since you are counting text entries. |
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