Finding text values in spreadsheet

[Padre]

I have spreadsheet where I list text values i column A, numeric values in
column B and text in column C

A B C
John 3 monday and tuesday
Viggo 1 never
Betty 9 who would have thought
Viggo 3 last week
Viggo 6 picking up pace
John 3 ?

etc

The numeric values are added, subtracted etc, and it's a long list, so to
create a bit of overview, I want to ferret out:
- the most frequently occurring names and
- the names responsible for the largest totals of numeric values.

The names are not pre-determined, new ones may occur frequently and with
very low frequency, so simply entering a separate list of names is not an
option. Therefor I need excel to generate a list of individual names and do
a "sumif" sort of calculation and list the top 5 largest results.

Frankly I'm in over my head and more than willing to get advice. I know VBA
is probably the cure to my problem, but I do't know enough about it to try,
and this is sort of a "one-shot" problem for me (I hope)

 

[Don Guillett]

Look in HELP index for LARGE

 

[Don Guillett]

More to fully answer where large finds the largest match finds the row and
index finds the name.
Look in HELP index for all three.
'=INDEX(A2:C12,MATCH(LARGE(B2:B12,1),B2:B12,0),1)

 

[Tom Ogilvy]

You can use a pivot table to get the results you describe.
Data=>PivotTable report.