Formula Help for Counting categories in a column

[Patti]

Hi!
I'm a teacher and we are scheduling students. Each student is assigned for
classes. We are trying to find a way for Excel to count the number of times
the class name appears so that we can get a class size by class name. For
instance,
if ART class has 40 people with ART in the column, we'd like it to count and
put a number in cell next to the label ART. We need to know if we are over
our maximum class size. Please HELP me!

 

[PJFry]

You may want to try a pivot table. That will allow you to pivot on the class
and count the number of names for each class.

Your other option is a COUNTIF formula.
A B C
Class Person =COUNTIF(A:A,"Art")
Art Mike
Art Bob
Art Lisa
Music PJ
Reading Eric
Art Fran

=COUNTIF(A:A,"Art") will evaluate as 4.
If you replace Art with music, you would get 1.

A pivot table is your best option. Countif will also work.

 

[Patti]

The COUNTIF worked great! I have no idea how to do pivot tables but have
always wanted to learn. Maybe when school gets out I'll have some time to do
the online tutorial. Thanks so much!!!

 

[Fred Smith]

Definitely spend the time to learn pivot tables, Patti. They're worth the
effort and not that difficult to learn. Lots of examples on the web.

Regards,
Fred