Comments on: Can I make an Excel chart from only one column?

Question: Can I make an Excel chart from only one column?

niles — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:06:28 -0800

How can I create a chart in Excel 2007 showing the number of times a certain value occurs in a column?

This seems like it should be really simple, but I can't for the life of me figure this out.
I have an excel spreadsheet with about 150 rows of marketing data that I'd like be able to chart, but with only a single column of data per chart. Maybe this is possible with Pivot Tables? I can't figure that out.

Here's an example: Column H has the cities everyone lives in. I want a chart showing how many people live in a given city. I could obviously count this out by hand ("Ok, that's 5 for San Diego.."), but I can't help but think Excel should be able to do the heavy lifting for me. I'm fine using macros/VBA, but this seems so simple! Famous last words, I know.

Let me know if I need to clarify this.

By: b33j

b33j — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:12:16 -0800

=COUNTIF(A1:A10,"SAN DIEGO")

By: b33j

b33j — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:14:26 -0800

Or, if you have the data sorted, you could SUBTOTAL

DATA>>SUBTOTALS>>at each change in city, use function COUNT, add SUBTOTAL to city.

By: mhum

mhum — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:21:01 -0800

You can do this in a Pivot Table. Just put your field (e.g.: City) into the Axis Field box (i.e.: make it a Row Label) and also into the Values box. Change the "Value Field Settings" for your field to "Count", if necessary; if your data was alphabetical instead of numeric, this shouldn't be necessary. Graph as desired.

By: squorch

squorch — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:22:01 -0800

countif() is what you're looking for.

By the by, if you're looking for the total number of non-blank cells in a range, use counta().

By: niles

niles — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:27:13 -0800

That's exactly what I was looking for, mhum. I had my Pivot Table, but I couldn't figure out where things went. Thanks.

Countif() would probably work too, except it looks like I'd have to go in a figure out what cities are in their. The Pivot Table sees for itself that San Diego is a possible value, which is a whole lot easier.

Thanks everyone!

By: yellowbkpk

yellowbkpk — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:45:24 -0800

It sounds like you're trying to make a histogram (please forgive me if I'm wrong), so check this page out: http://peltiertech.com/Excel/Charts/Histograms.html

By: yellowbkpk

yellowbkpk — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 17:45:43 -0800

Ack, sorry: Link