Thanks for that but unfortunately it wont help in what im trying to do,
here's some some background .. for a number of months there has been an
ongoing spreadhseet which is filled in daily.

This sheet holds many different forms of data and unfortunately means that
when i want to search for the highest 3 runners i have to search
conditionally using a week number

the previous posters help allowed me to search within the condition for the
most often occuring but i also need the 2nd and 3rd most common.

when the data is analised its done so from a week to week basis and so the
ability to search from week to week is a necessity.

"T. Valko" wrote:

See this:

http://tinyurl.com/2gq3td

--
Biff
Microsoft Excel MVP