Ever wanted to get distinct count in Excel? You can use Pivot Table to get the answer quickly. Something like this:

Here is a simple trick to add distinct count to Excel pivot tables quickly.
Let’s say you have data like this:

As you can see, several products are repeated on each day. When you make a pivot table from this data and add product count, Excel counts all products. But we want to see just the distinct count (ie if there is a duplicate product in a day, we want to count it just once). To get distinct count in the pivot table,
These instructions work only in Excel 2016, Office 365 and Excel 2013.
- Insert a pivot table from your data
- In the create pivot dialog, enable “Add this data to data model” option.

- Once you have the pivot table canvas, add the product (or any other field for which you want to calculate distinct count) to the values area.
- Right click on the values, go to “Value field settings”.

- Summarize the value by “Distinct count”. This is the last option.
- All done!
Distinct Count in Excel Pivot Tables – Example Workbook
If you want to practice this or want to see this with an example, here is the workbook.














11 Responses to “Use Alt+Enter to get multiple lines in a cell [spreadcheats]”
@Chandoo:
One more useful trick.......
In a column you have no. of data in rows and need to copy in the next row from the previous row, no need to go for the previous rows but entering Alt + down arrow, you will get the list of data, (in asending order), entered in the previous rows...
This is another great tip. I use this all the time to make sense of some *very* long formulas. As soon as the formula is debugged I remove the break.
Great tip Chandoo!
I use this feature often and it has even gotten the, "how did you do that" response.
Thanks!
@Ketan: Alt+down arrow is an awesome tip. I never knew it and now I am using it everyday.
@Jorge, Tony: Agree... 🙂
[...] Day 1: Insert Line Breaks in a Cell [...]
how can we merge a two sheet.
excellent idea. Chandoo you are genious
Hi chandoo,
I have used ctrl+enter to break the cell. But I did not get the result.
Please tell me how can i break the cell in multiple lines.
Hi, Ranveer,
Its not Ctrl+enter to break the cell, use Alt+Enter to make it happen.
hi Chandoo....
how we can use Alt+Enter in multiple rows at the same time please reply hurry i have lot of work and have no time and i m stuck in this. 🙁
Alt+J worked once 🙁
So I found another more reliable way:
=SUBSTITUTE(A2,CHAR(13),"")
Where A2 is the cell that contains the line breaks which the code for it is CHAR(13). It will replace it with whatever inside the ""