Ravindra BagaleCourses & study guides

9. Dynamic Arrays

9.4 UNIQUE

=UNIQUE(array, [by_col], [exactly_once])

Need Formula Result (mini data)
Distinct cities =UNIQUE(tblMini[City]) 6 cities
Distinct cities sorted =SORT(UNIQUE(tblMini[City])) Kolhapur … Solapur
Count distinct =COUNTA(UNIQUE(tblMini[City])) 6
Cities appearing exactly once =UNIQUE(tblMini[City], , TRUE) Nagpur, Kolhapur, Solapur, Sambhaji Nagar
Distinct City–Platform pairs =UNIQUE(tblMini[[City]:[Platform]]) 7 pairs

Worked example – a self-updating summary.

=LET(c, SORT(UNIQUE(tblMini[City])),
     HSTACK(c, SUMIFS(tblMini[Amount], tblMini[City], c)))
City Sales
Kolhapur 232
Nagpur 240
Nashik 360
Pune 544
Sambhaji Nagar 195
Solapur 1,299

Ravindra Bagale's Tip

UNIQUE counts "pune" and "Pune " (with a space) as different – many students see 8 cities instead of 6. Clean the data before using UNIQUE (Module 5). And "exactly_once = TRUE" means items that appear only once, not distinct – this can be asked in an interview.

Practice task

Build a self-updating city summary with UNIQUE + SUMIFS + COUNTIFS (sales and orders), sorted by sales descending.