Excel concatenate() is seriously crippled, it can add 2 or more strings together, as long as they are supplied as separate parameters. This means, when you have a range of cells with text which you want to add up to create a large text, you need to write an ugly looking biggish concatenate() or use ‘&’ operator over and again.
I felt bored enough the other day to write a better concatenate(), one that can accept a range as input and output one text with all the contents of the input range. What more you can use this to delimit the input range with your own favorite character.
For example, if each of the 7 cells in a1:a7 have “a”, “b”, “c”, “d”, “e”, “f”, “g”, if you want to add all of them up using concatenate you would have to write concatenate(a1,a2,a3,a4,a5,a6,a7) which can be painful if you are planning to do this over a large range or something.
Instead, you can use concat(a1:a7) by installing the UDF (User defined function) I have written. Its nothing miraculous or anything, it just does the dirty job of going through the range for you. If you want to delimit the input range with a comma just use concat(a1:a7,",") to get the out of a,b,c,d,e,f,g Just download the concat() UDF excel add-in and double click on it to install it. If you are little weary of installing UDFs / Macros from third parties, copy past the below excel code in a new sheet’s VB editor and save the sheet as an excel addin (.xla extension)
Added on Aug 26, 2008: I have updated the code, copy it again if you have the old one
Function concat(useThis As Range, Optional delim As String) As String
' this function will concatenate a range of cells and return one string
' useful when you have a rather large range of cells that you need to add up
Dim retVal, dlm As String
retVal = ""
If delim = Null Then
dlm = ""
Else
dlm = delim
End If
For Each cell In useThis
if cstr(cell.value)<>"" and cstr(cell.value)<>" " then
retVal = retVal & cstr(cell.Value) & dlm
end if
Next
If dlm <> "" Then
retVal = Left(retVal, Len(retVal) - Len(dlm))
End If
concat = retVal
End Function
Did you find this useful? Are you looking for some other excel UDFs as well, drop a comment, I am a busy coffee drinker, but between the sips I can whip out ugly looking but functional vb code 😛
21 Responses to “Distinct count in Excel pivot tables”
The distinct count option works well but I have found that if I have a date field and want to group by year, month, etc. that option seems to be disabled. I need to do both, distinct count and group by year/month.
Example data; sales orders with item quantities with dates.
Challenge; sum the item quantities, count the distinct orders and group by month. How do I do this?
Perhaps that's not possible due to the grouping?
@Al... When you use data model based pivots, you cannot group values manually anymore. Why not use Excel 2016's default date grouping option? In this case we have just a few dates, so Excel is not grouping them, but if you have an year's worth of data, when you make the pivot with date in the row label area, Excel automatically groups them. If you have fewer dates or want to use your own grouping, just create a table with all dates, add columns with month, week, year etc. Then connect this table (these types of tables are usually called as calendar tables) to your data on date field as a relationship. Now you can create reports by month, quarter etc easily.
Is this the only way to do it in 2013? I find it rather cumbersome to have to create another data table listing dates with the another column for MONTH() and YEAR() to be able to summarise data for senior level...
I know people find adding calendar tables cumbersome, but it is a best practice and let's you add more layers of analysis quite easily. For example, adding analysis by weekday vs. weekend or by financial quarter or YTD calculations (you would need either Power Pivot DAX or some very carefully setup pivot table value field settings)
I had absolutely no idea this was possible. Very useful, nice work!
Doesn't work for 2010 version though (or at least not my works version)
Hi ,
The post has the following in it :
These instructions work only in Excel 2016, Office 365 and Excel 2013.
when i have 2 different Pivot tables, one without the enabled “Add this data to data model” option, and the other one with it enabled.. is there anyway i can link slicers between them?
if the answer is NO,, what to do ?
Quick note, the “Add this data to data model” option is not available for the Mac version.
perhaps outside scope of this article but I have found when I attempt to create a pivot table from an external data source (connection to a sql view) the "Add this data to data model" becomes greyed out. Anybody experienced and found a solution so I can start getting distinct count in my pivot tables?
Is there a way to still add a calculated field when using distinct count?
I found I can't change the date source after tick the " add this data to the data model", can you help to adv how to change the date source in such case?
Is there a way to update the source once you have added to the data model? I receive a new spreadsheet weekly and would like to update the connection so my tables pull from the new source.
Hi Crhis, I like how you have hulk (superhero) as your avatar. Do you know that there is a superhero in Excel too? It's Power Query. You can use it to solve your problem in a simple click. Here an intro if you need some guidance.
Powerful Introduction to Power Query
A big Thank you. It worked.
Hi, have survey data that I need to analyze but the challenge is that my key fields are showing horizontally. I tried to transpose the fields using Power Query, but unfortunately the new fields are returning same values on a pivot table despite using distinct values
How I can a do a pivot table with discount conts in some columns and then generate shor report filter pages. pls it drives crazy
Hi. Why grand total pivot of distinct count is 13? shouldn't it be 67?
Great Answer! Saved me lots of time!
Thank you!!!
Worked awesome! Thanks!!
Hi Chandoo,
I am using pivot tables for distinct count and now I need to update them with new set of data. But when I update the source data, all the columns and formatting of Pivot table disappears and I need to build it from Scratch.
Is there a possibility that I can update the source data with new rows added and also retain my pivot tables?