Counting the number of times a word appears in a column in Excel

How do you count the number of times a thing appears in a column of text? For example, if you're the type of person who downloads your credit card information, how many purchases did you make at any particular vendor?

If you know the number of things you're counting is small and manageable, using count (if numeric) or counta (if non-numeric) at the bottom might be the way to go. But if you don't (or can't) know, there's an elegant, nifty use of countif that solves the problem instantly - without resorting to PivotTables or any fancy stuff.

(image property of KyleMit on StackOverflow)

You can then filter, group, etc.

COUNTIF(range, criteria) - set the range to the entire column, and just count the thing next to you.

Simple. Brilliant. Love it.

Full article at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18661016/how-many-times-do-each-value-appear-in-a-column.