If the lists of 15 critical items are actually contained in one cell:

Example: A1:A6 contains: 1,4,6,18,19,23,44,50
1,4,6,18,19,23,44,50
4,6,18,19,23,44,50
6,18,19,23,44,50
1,4,6,18,19,23,44,50
1,4,6,19,23,44


Then try this:

D1:D50 contains the series 1 through 50

This formula returns the count of D1's value in A1:A6
E1:
=SUMPRODUCT(--((SEARCH(","&D1&",",","&$A$1:$A$6&","&D1&",")-LEN($A$1:$A$6))<0))
Copy that formula down through E50

Using the example:
1 occurs 4 times
2 occurs 0 times
3 occurs 0 times
4 occurs 5 times
etc

Is that something you can work with?
--------------------------

Regards,

Ron (XL2003, Win XP)
Microsoft MVP (Excel)



"porter444" wrote in message
...
Gurus,

Hope you can help me out once again. You guys/gals ROCK!

I have a worksheet that contains survey results and in one column there
are
the results of a ranking exercise. The survey respondant enters a list of
numbers that correspond to the 15 most critical items from a list of 50
items. Each item is designated by a number between 1 - 50.

The entry looks like 1,4,6,18,19,23,44,50...

On another worksheet I need to summarize how many times each of the 50
items
makes it into a top 15 response.

In other words I need to be able to count how many times 1 appears in
column
D (not 10,11,12,21,31,41...ect.).

My struggle here is coming up with a way to count if the range contains a
specific value, and then how to exclude non-matches like 10,11,12... etc.

Any help you can provide would be AWESOME.

Thanks,

Scott