Excel then uses the text within quotes but discards the quotation marks. This poses a problem when you actually need to concatenate the double quotation marks themselves.

If you do, Excel will give you a circular reference warning. Type this function in the cell, including the quotation marks but excluding the final period: =COUNTIF (cell range, "phrase").

Figure B How to use the UNIQUE () function in Excel If you’re using Microsoft 365 or one of the 2019 standalone versions of Excel, you can quickly create a dynamic list using the UNIQUE () function.