Counting number of cells displaying given data

**Eric_Fischer** · 02-06-2009, 03:43 PM

First post all, appreciate the help.

I have a table here specifying all components used in building a particular machine we build, as listed by section. We're going to build a lot of these, so we need a way more absolute cost report than we normally generate, to ensure maximum profitability per machine. As such, I need to assemble a sheet of components listed by their part numbers, and containing the cost per part, cost for the total of that part used in the machine, bulk discounts available, etc.

As each component is listed individually in the BOM there might be 40 or 50 of a given component listed, but scattered randomly through out the BOM sheet. I assumed that if I created an extra column, and added a countif function, specifying the part number column, it should come back and tell me how many cells there are of each particular part number, which is how many of a given part there are in the machine.

However, that didn't work, and it wouldn't return a value. It just stayed =countif(H:H,H2), as I decided to enter the part number listed in cell H2 as the first one to count up.

Help?

**arthurbr** · 02-06-2009, 03:57 PM

Hi and welcome to the board,
maybe it's a bit of an overkill but why not try a Pivot Table?

**Eric_Fischer** · 02-06-2009, 04:05 PM

I probably should. It's 3PM of a friday and I was hoping to bang this out by 4 and scoot early. Ah well.

Edit:

Actually, that was easier than expected. I don't know why I thought it would take more work to do that. I knew I'd just have to insert the Part number as a row field and quantity as a value. Eeesh.