I know there has to be a way. I have a list of physician's names and all pending orders for that physician. So it looks something like this
face to face | patient | dr somebody| date
face to face | new pa | dr someone | date
So, I have a list of over 400 doctors, how can I tell excel to count and tell me how many times each doctor appears without manually highlighting and counter each individual doctor?
Pivot Table.
Highlight the column you want to make counts of (including the header row such as "DOCTOR"). Go to Insert -> Pivot Table, and just hit OK. On the right side, drag DOCTOR to the "Row Labels" and "Values" section at the bottom right. The Value will automatically switch to "Count of DOCTOR".
I also looked at COUNTIF but everything I saw said you had to show exactly what you wanted it to count, which would require typing in each individual doctors names, right?
Yes. Like I said, it depends on what your actual goal is. It is, of course, possible to overcome this limitation, but it seems that the pivot table may work out better.
Highlight the column you want to make counts of (including the header row such as "DOCTOR"). Go to Insert -> Pivot Table, and just hit OK. On the right side, drag DOCTOR to the "Row Labels" and "Values" section at the bottom right. The Value will automatically switch to "Count of DOCTOR".
I've been looking for something like this for a long time, so I'm glad this thread happened.