How can I condense or summarize a list in Excel?

Question

I have a excel file with entries that appear multiple times. Example:

• A
• A
• A
• B
• B
• C
• C

How can I change this to a form that looks like this:

• A 3
• B 2
• C 2

Answer 1

You can do this easily with a pivot table. Here's Microsoft's documentation about pivot tables.

Answer 2

So long as you know the name of each item in the list, you can automate it.

     A    B           C

1    A    A    =COUNTIF(A:A, B1)
2    A    B    =COUNTIF(A:A, B2)
3    A    C    =COUNTIF(A:A, B3)
4    B    D    =COUNTIF(A:A, B4)
5    B
6    C
7    C

Will show:

     A    B    C

1    A    A    3
2    A    B    2
3    A    C    2
4    B    D    0
5    B
6    C
7    C