How to rank data by occurrences in Excel?

Have you ever tried to rank data by the times they appear in a list as below screenshot shown? This article introduces some tricks to solving this job in Excel.

Rank data by occurrences with formula

Rank data by occurrences with Kutools for Excel’s Advanced Sort

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Rank data by occurrences with formula

To rank data by occurrences, you need to count the times each data appear first, and then rank the occurrences.

1. Copy and paste the data list into another place, and click Data > Remove Duplicates. See screenshot:

2. Then click OK > OK to close the dialogs. See screenshot:

Now the unique references have been extracted. See screenshot:

3. In the next column of the extracted data, for instance, E2, type this formula =COUNTIF($A$2:$A$12,D2) to count the times each data appears in the original list, press Enter key, and drag fill handle down to apply this formula to the cells.

In the formula, A2:A12 is the data original list you use, D2 is the reference you count.

4. Then in the next column of the counted data, F2, and then type this formula =RANK(E2,$E$2:$E$6), press Enter key and drag fill handle down to calculate the ranking. See screenshot:

In the formula, E2 is the cell you want to calculate the ranking, E2:E6 is the range you use.

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Rank data by occurrences with Kutools for Excel’s Advanced Sort

If you want to rank data by occurrences in their original place, you can use Kutools for Excel’s Advanced Sort utility to quickly deal with this formula.

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After installing Kutools for Excel, please do as below: （Free Download Kutools for Excel Now!)

1. Select the data you use and click Kutools Plus > Sort > Advanced Sort. See screenshot:

2. Then in the Advanced Sort dialog, select the column you want to rank and sort, select Frequency from the Sort On drop down list, and specify the sorting order. See screenshot:

3. Click Ok, the data has been sorted by frequency from the least to the most.

Demo