Excel 2007 : Keeping the value of a COUNTIF after removing duplicates

Hi!

I have a spreadsheet with multiple duplicate rows. I need this data sorted in order of their frequency (largest to smallest), so I setup a COUNTIF and sorted them. Now I would like to remove the duplicate rows, but keep the COUNTIF at the same value and have Excel add to it if other duplicates are added to the spreadsheet in the future.

How can I go about doing this?

Attached is an example of what I have right now; the last column (S) contains my COUNTIF. Notice that some of the values throughout the row will not be an exact match with eachother. Column A, however, will always be what differentiates between "Joe Shmoe" and "Cali", for example.