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Mchen95's avatar
Mchen95
Copper Contributor
Jun 17, 2021

Pivot Table Count Unique or Similar Values

Hi, I was wondering if there’s a way to create a pivot table that counts unique values. I have tried adding to data model and selecting distinct count. This works, but then I run into a problem where two values are counted separately because they are written slightly different, but should be categorized together as one count. Normally I would try to group them together but then the group count would be 2 instead of 1.

Example:
GL109
GL109-title

These two values are actually the same, however they are written differently so excel counts them as 2.

10 Replies

  • mathetes's avatar
    mathetes
    Silver Contributor

    Mchen95 

     

    It's hard to give anything but general advice given the very sparse description of your situation. 

     

    One thing you should do, if you haven't already, is to look into the still relatively new UNIQUE function, which can extract from a long list the actual unique values, which can then be counted.

     

    IF the aberrations are always following the variations in the example you gave, you could always look just at the first five characters, making use of the LEFT function to strip off the GL109 from "GL109--anything else"  But if that was just an example and not representative of your actual data, you'll need to do something else to clean up the aberrations.

     

    Here's a helpful video on UNIQUEhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9I9DtFOVPIg

     

    • ElizabethMabrey's avatar
      ElizabethMabrey
      Copper Contributor

      Well my issue is this:
      - trying to tally students for a class.
      - while it shows the subtotal, it also shows the count 1 for each student row:

      Class 1Name11
       Name21
       Name21
       Class 1 total3
      Class 2Namex1
       Namey1
       Namez1
       Class 2 total3


      Showing all the 1s do not make sense and make the report hard to read.

      Shall appreciate suggestion how to "not" showing the 1s.

      • SergeiBaklan's avatar
        SergeiBaklan
        Diamond Contributor

        ElizabethMabrey 

        If something like this

        creating PivotTable add data to data model and create measure

        Count Names:=IF( HASONEVALUE(Table1[Name]), "", COUNTROWS( Table1 ) )

        Use it in PivotTable instead of default aggregation.

  • StoneKiwi's avatar
    StoneKiwi
    Iron Contributor
    Hi,

    Try adding another column that makes GL109 and GL109-title the same.
    e.g. =LEFT(cellwithGL109-title, 5)
    =GL109

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