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How to rank data by occurrences in Excel?

Author Sun Last modified

Have you ever tried to rank data by the number of times they appear in a list, as shown in the screenshot below? This article introduces some tricks for solving this task in Excel.
A screenshot of a list of data ranking by occurrences

Rank data by occurrences with formula

Rank data by occurrences with Kutools for Excel’s Advanced Sortgood idea3

Rank data by occurrences with formula

To rank data by occurrences, you need to count the number of times each value appears first, and then rank the occurrences.

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

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

A screenshot of the Remove Duplicates dialog Arrow right A screenshot of the dialog displaying number of duplicates found and removed

Now the unique references have been extracted. See screenshot:

A screenshot of the original data Arrow right A screenshot of a list of unique data after using the Remove Duplicates feature

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

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:
A screenshot of using the RANK formula in Excel to rank data by occurrences

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

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

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

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1. Select the data you use and click Kutools Plus > Sort > Advanced Sort. See screenshot:
A screenshot of the Kutools for Excel Advanced Sort option in Excel

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:
A screenshot of the Advanced Sort dialog

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

A screenshot of the original data Arrow right A screenshot of data in Excel showing the result after sorting by frequency using Kutools

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Demo: Rank data by occurrences with Kutools for Excel

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