excel count unique text with wildcard criteria

I have a column of data that lists a number of "cases" that are tied to outage events. They are NOT in alpha order and some are blank. There are duplicates because some efforts (cases) will fix multiple outages. The CASE-A------ means the case is Active. CASE-C------ means the case is Closed. I want to know how many (unique) Cases I have that are Active.

column N
---------------------------
CASE-A00021: Fix bluh
CASE-A00010: Fix error in code
CASE-C00032: Research logging error
<blank>
CASE-A00021: Fix bluh
CASE-C00011: Apply list logic
<blank>
CASE-A00021: Fix bluh
CASE-A00010: Fix error in code

I have tried:

=SUM(IF(FREQUENCY(IF(LEN('Outage-Data'!$N$2:$N$1049)>0,MATCH('Outage-Data'!$N$2:$N$1049,'Outage-Data'!$N$2:$N$1049,0),""),IF(LEN('Outage-Data'!$N$2:$N$1049)>0,MATCH('Outage-Data'!$N$2:$N$1049,'Outage-Data'!$N$2:$N$1049,0),""))>0,1))

but this gets all unique "A" active and "C" completed. I just want the Active Cases.

and of course:

=COUNTIF('Outage-Data'!$N$2:$N$1049,"CASE-A*")

gives me ALL Active entries, including the duplicates.

Can someone please help me with this solutions.

Thank you in advance!

Tr

Hi Oldchippy,

Thank you for the response. However I still do not see a distinction between "A" active and "C" closed cases in the count column. My first command will give me all the unique counts but the problem is it includes both active and closed. Is there another obvious step that I am missing?

THANKS!