Help for classifying categorical variables to groups

Hi all,

I need to classify categorical variables to groups and then calculate the sizes of the groups (frequency or percentage of the variables in the groups).

I need help for the classification especially. I have a column of about 100 variables consisting of letters and numbers. The goal is to classify them by the first two letters. For example, if the cell value begins with ”AA” then it belongs to Group 1 and so on. I would like to create a column where each group is once and the amount of variables in that group is next to it in another column.

Is this even possible? Any help for classifying categorical variables is much appreciated.

Here is a sample. So the data is on the column A and I want it to look like columns D and E in the sample. I would like to identify the groups from the first two letters of the code. All the codes beginning with HR belong to group Human Resources and FI to Finance and so on. The number in the column E indicates, for example, how many HR**** codes exist in the data.

Thank you very much for this!
One more question. Is there a formula that would give the group name as an outcome? Some way to identify the first two letters and transform them to text? FI to finance and so on by using a lookup table perhaps. My data is so damn huge...

Thank you so much both of you! Problem solved