This blog post describes how to create a list of unique words from a cell range. Unique words are all words not having duplicates.

Cell range A2:A14 contains words, see picture.

Rick Rothstein (MVP - Excel) helped me out here with a powerful user defined function (udf).

Array formula in cell B2:B23

This is how you enter an array formula, type the formula in a cell then press and hold CTRL + SHIFT simultaneously, now press Enter once. Release all keys.

The formula bar now shows the formula with a beginning and ending curly bracket telling you that you entered the formula successfully. Don't enter the curly brackets yourself.

Array formula in cell C2:C23

Select all the cells to be filled, then type the above formula  into the Formula Bar and press CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER

User defined function

Instructions

1. You can select far more cells to load the formulas in than are required by the list. The empty text string will be displayed for cells not having an entry.
2. You can specify a larger range than the there are filled in cells as the argument to these macros to allow for future entries in the column.
3. You can specify whether the listing is to be case sensitive or not via the optional second argument with the default value being FALSE, meaning duplicated entries with different casing like One, one, ONE, onE, etc.. will all be treated as if they were the same word with the same spelling. If you pass TRUE for that optional second argument, then those words would all be treated as if they were different words.
4. For all the "Case Insensitive" listing, the words are listed in Proper Case (first letter upper case, remaining letters lower case). The reason being if you had One, one and ONE then there is not reason to prefer one version over another, so I solved the problem by using Proper Case throughout.

VBA Code:

Function UniqueWords(Rng As Range, Optional  CaseSensitive As Boolean) As Variant
Dim X As Long, WordCount As Long,  List As String, Uniques As Variant, Words() As String
List =  WorksheetFunction.Trim(Replace(Join(WorksheetFunction.Transpose(Rng)), Chr(160),  " "))
Words = Split(List)
For X = 0 To  UBound(Words)
If CaseSensitive  Then
If UBound(Split(" " & List & " ",  " " & Words(X) & " ")) = 1  Then
Uniques = Uniques &  Words(X) & " "
List =  Replace(List, Words(X), "")
End  If
Else
If  UBound(Split(" " & UCase(List) & " ", " " & UCase(Words(X)) & "  ")) = 1 Then
Uniques = Uniques  & StrConv(Words(X), vbProperCase) & "  "
List = Replace(List, Words(X),  "")
End If
End  If
Next
Uniques = WorksheetFunction.Trim(Uniques)
Words = Split(Uniques)
If Application.Caller.Count > UBound(Words)  Then
Uniques = Uniques &  Space(Application.Caller.Count - UBound(Words))
End If
UniqueWords = WorksheetFunction.Transpose(Split(Uniques))
End  Function

How to implement user defined function in excel

1. Press Alt-F11 to open visual basic editor
2. Press with left mouse button on Module on the Insert menu
3. Copy and paste the above user defined function
4. Exit visual basic editor
5. Select a sheet
6. Select a cell range
7. Type =UniqueWords($A$2:$A$18, TRUE) into formula bar and press CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER

Get the Excel file

Unique-words-from-a-range.xls

Get Rick Rothstein's Excel example file

Get the Excel file

Word-Listing-Code1.xls

Many thanks to Rick Rothstein (Mvp - Excel)!!

---

Weekly Blog EMAIL

[newsletter_signup_form id=1]

Welcome! I am Oscar and here to help you out.

Feel free to comment and ask Excel questions.

Make sure you subscribe to my newsletter so you don't miss new blog articles.

Related articles

---

Split words in a cell range into a cell each [UDF]

This post describes how to split words in a cell range into a cell each using a custom function. I […]

Setting up your work hours in a weekly schedule

The image above demonstrates conditional formatting highlighting hours outside work hours, those cells are filled with grey except weekends. Conditional formatting […]

Count digits and ignore duplicates

Question: I have a question that I can’t seem to find an answer to: I want to make a full […]

Extract a unique distinct list based on a condition [Pivot Table]

Anura asks: I have a list of credit card transactions showing the name of the cardholder, their Branch and the […]

Filter unique distinct values (case sensitive) [UDF]

The User Defined Function demonstrated in the above picture extracts unique distinct values also considering lower and upper case letters. […]

Fuzzy lookups [UDF]

In this post I will describe a basic user defined function with better search functionality than the array formula in […]