# (Possibly) Easy Excel question re: histograms

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/possibly-easy-excel-question-re-histograms/476901>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 12, 2008, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/possibly-easy-excel-question-re-histograms/476901 "2008-12-12T17:10:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jharvey963](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/54ee81/32.png) [@jharvey963](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jharvey963)\
**Post date:** [December 12, 2008, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/possibly-easy-excel-question-re-histograms/476901/1 "2008-12-12T17:10:11Z")

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This will probably be an easy question for an Excel guru / expert / user better than me. 🙂

I have several columns of data with values between 1 and 100. I want to get a single histogram-like result that tells me how many '1’s there are, how many '2’s there are, … how many '100’s there are.

I’d rather not concatenate all of the columns into a single column.

How would I do this? (Perhaps histogram isn’t the correct vehicle for this task?) Getting either numerical results or a chart (or both) would be fine.

Thanks,  
J.

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**Author:** ![TroubleAgain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e480ec/32.png) [@TroubleAgain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TroubleAgain)\
**Post date:** [December 12, 2008, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/possibly-easy-excel-question-re-histograms/476901/2 "2008-12-12T17:36:23Z")

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It sounds like you want the COUNT IF function. The help file for “Count how often multiple number values occur by using functions” section explains how to use that function for this purpose.

Then you can take the results and put them into a pivot table and/or chart.

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**Author:** ![HookerChemical](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/278dde/32.png) [@HookerChemical](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HookerChemical)\
**Post date:** [December 12, 2008, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/possibly-easy-excel-question-re-histograms/476901/3 "2008-12-12T22:48:13Z")

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> [@TroubleAgain](#):
>
> It sounds like you want the COUNT IF function. The help file for “Count how often multiple number values occur by using functions” section explains how to use that function for this purpose.
> 
> Then you can take the results and put them into a pivot table and/or chart.

This is correct. The function should look like:

=countif(range,value)

where range is the columns of data, and value is the number you’re looking for. You might try creating a row or column of cells with each value from 1 to 100 then linking value in the formula to a cell in the 1 to 100 you just created. You can then drag the formula to count the number of each value.