Ok I found the answer after a while by myself. COUNTIF delivers here an
array back. This array counts the number of each value in the rage
which have been passed as criteria. To debug the array use the INDEX()
function.
i.e.
=INDEX(COUNTIF($A$1:$A$9;$A$1:$A$9);1;1)
=INDEX(COUNTIF($A$1:$A$9;$A$1:$A$9);1;2)
etc..

regards
Mark Egloff