Question

I’ve searched the web but I can’t find anything specific for this.

I have column A as below, I need to search this column and find out how many occurrences there are of the data in column B, in the example below there a 4 (70011×3 + 70014×1).

A                        B
h323:70011               70011
70007                    70012
70011                    70013
h323:70014               70014
sip:[e-mail]     70015

What formula would I need to use in Excel?
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

… I don’t know if there’s a simple way to do this with a single worksheet function, but I could think of 2 methods I would use to accomplish this (and would love to see if any person could figure out how to do this in a single, simple, worksheet function I couldn’t think of).

Either way, my solutions would be:

1) Use Array Formulas:

This would look as follows:

A                        B               C
h323:70011               70011          {=SUM(--ISNUMBER(FIND(B1,$A$1:$A$5,1)))}
70007                    70012          {=SUM(--ISNUMBER(FIND(B2,$A$1:$A$5,1)))}
...etc

Note that for this solution, you have to type it in as an array formula (Hit ctrl+shift+enter) at the end, but when you drag down column C and sum it up, you will get the correct total.
The challenge with this one is that it doesn’t really give you the answer in one cell.

2) Use a Custom VBA Function (My Preferred method):

You can write your own VBA function to do this VERY EASILY.
The one I created was:

  Function MyFunc(CriteriaRng As Range, SearchRange As Range) As Double

  Dim CriteriaCl As Range
  Dim SearchCl As Range

  Dim RunningTotal As Double: RunningTotal = 0

     For Each CriteriaCl In CriteriaRng
        For Each SearchCl In SearchRange
        If InStr(1, SearchCl.Value, CriteriaCl.Value) > 0 Then RunningTotal = RunningTotal + 1
        Next SearchCl
     Next CriteriaCl

  MyFunc = RunningTotal

  End Function

All you can then do is in any cell type in =myfunc(B1:B5,A1:A5) and you will get the right answer.

Hope this helps!