Sequentially number occurences of a string in a list

Hi guys,

I'm just learning the more intricate parts of excel but have been handed a request from a colleague that i'm having difficulty completing.

They have many lists such as the one below (each with several hundred values):

AUD001
AUT001
AUT001
AUT001
AYL001
BAI001
BAL001
BAR001
BAR001
BAR001
BAR001

They have asked me to create a formula (or macro, etc). that will go through the list and if their is a recurring value increase the number at the end, so in the list above it would be:

AUD001
AUT001
AUT002
AUT003
AYL001
BAI001
BAL001
BAR001
BAR002
BAR003
BAR004

If anyone can help i'd greatly appreciate it.

Thanks,

Tim

Welcome to the forum,

Your post does not comply with Rule 1 of our Forum RULES. Your post title should accurately and concisely describe your problem, not your anticipated solution. Use terms appropriate to a Google search. Poor thread titles, like Please Help, Urgent, Need Help, Formula Problem, Code Problem, and Need Advice will be addressed according to the OP's experience in the forum: If you have less than 10 posts, expect (and respond to) a request to change your thread title. If you have 10 or more posts, expect your post to be locked, so you can start a new thread with an appropriate title.
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It would still be nice if you changed your title and posted your solution anyway.

This would help others in the future looking for similar solution.

Okay so you changed the title but no solution....

... not sure how you solved it, but this would be one suggestion.

In an adjacent column enter:

=IF(COUNTIF(A$1:A1,A1)>1,LEFT(A1,LEN(A1)-1)&COUNTIF(A$1:A1,A1),A1)

where A1 contains first of your series of codes

Copy down

then

Copy the new column and go to old column and do Edit|Paste Special and select Values.. then you can delete the formula column.

Hey Mr Moderator,

Sorry for not posting the solution earlier - they grabbed me to implement it.

I have to say that your solution is far more elegant than mine! (though it may need an if statement for when the count is greater than 9 else the addition of the count would make the string longer).

In the column next to the list I put:

=LEFT(A1,LEN(A1)-3)

/this was to isolate the three letter code.

In the next column i put:

=IF(ROW(A1)=1,1,(IF(C1<>(INDIRECT("C"&ROW(C1)-1)),1,((INDIRECT("D"&ROW(C1)-1))+1))))

/ This was to put "1" if the value of the three letter code was different to the one above, else to add one to the number of the value in the cell above the formula. The use of indirect was to reference the cell above even when you are pasting it in the first row, without ruining the formula for when you copy it down into the cells below.


The third column was:

=C1&(IF(D1>9,"0","00")&D1)

This combined the three letter code with the number from the previous cell, plus either one or two zeros in the middle.

Like i said yours was a lot more elegant, but mine did the job - so i won't tell them that i could have done it better!

Thanks for your help mr moderator, i will play about using the countif function - never used it before.

Cheers,

Tim

Looking at it again... this one should be much better and allows for up to 999

=LEFT(A1,3)&TEXT(COUNTIF(A$1:A1,A1),"000")

If you want to learn yet another function, you could also use:


=LEFT(A1,3)&TEXT(COUNTIF(A$1:A1,A1),REPT(0,3))



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