If the functions in the freely downloadable file at
http://home.pacbell.net/beban are available to your workbook

=COUNTA(B:B)-COUNTA(ArrayUniques(B:B)) if HVT and Hvt are not duplicates;

=COUNTA(B:B)-COUNTA(ArrayUniques(B:B,FALSE)) if they are.

Alan Beban

Biff wrote:
Hi!

This all depends on what you mean by "exact" duplicate.

HVT88947
Hvt88947

Would those be exact duplicates or is that not an issue?

Here's how you can calc duplictes and uniques.

First, create a dynamic named range for your list. Assume
your list starts in A1.

Goto InsertNameDefine
In the Name box, enter a name for your list. I'll call it
LIST.
In the Refers To box, enter this formula:

=OFFSET(A1,0,0,COUNTA(A:A),1)

Click Add then OK.

Now, to find the unique values in the list enter this
formula: (assume you enter this formula in B1)

=SUMPRODUCT((List<"")/COUNTIF(List,List&""))

To find the number of duplicates enter this formula:

=COUNTA(LIST)-B1

All of this assumes that there are no blank cells in the
list!

Biff


-----Original Message-----
Let's say you have a list of hundreds of confirmation

numbers, they can be

text, numeric or alpa-numeric, how can I know how many of

the entries are

exact duplicates vs how many are different. Example:
HVT88947
HVT88947
HVT88948
HVT88948
9784268
712589
DDKLM
DDKLM
HVT88946
712589
Ok, we have 10 entries above. Four of them are duplicate

entries, six of

them are different entries, right? Ok, so lets say you

now have thousands of

these entries and you know there are lots of duplicates

somewhere in the

list. How can you calculate how many are duplicate

entries and how many are

different (or original entries)? And you need to have

the calc work so that

as people add more entries the calc always updates the

number of duplicates

there are in the growing list?
.