To count distinct values in a CSV column, import the file into Datablist, open the column's Calculations tool, and choose Count distinct values. The result shows how many different values occur and how often each appears. For example, Paris, PARIS, and Paris count as one value with the default case-insensitive setting.

Example Distinct Values
Example Distinct Values

This is useful for checking a Country, Status, or Source column before cleaning or segmenting a list.

Get distinct values in a CSV file

First, load your CSV file into the Datablist CSV editor. Registered Free accounts support collections with up to 1 million items in browser storage; paid plans support imports with up to 2 million items. The number of distinct results displayed is a separate limit from the import size.

Create a new collection ("+" button in the left sidebar) and then click "Import CSV" to load your file.

Import CSV file
Import CSV file

CSV columns and your CSV content is visible directly in Datablist in a few seconds. Click on the CSV column you want to analyze.

Open Calculations tool
Open Calculations tool

Select Count distinct values in the calculation options. Keep Splitting Rule on the full cell when each CSV cell contains one category. If a cell contains several values separated by commas or another character, choose that separator to count each part separately. Leave Case-sensitive off to group Paris and PARIS, or turn it on when letter case should make two values distinct. Other calculations include word count and character count.

Calculation Selection
Calculation Selection

Run the calculation and inspect the counts. The result view displays at most the first 10,000 distinct values for performance, so a larger list may be truncated even when the CSV import succeeds. See the Calculations reference for scope, splitting and result-export options.

When you need a column for each category as well as a count, follow the named-term splitting workflow for Excel or CSV files.

Distinct Value Results
Distinct Value Results

Distinct value algorithm explained

By default, Datablist trims leading and trailing spaces and compares text without regard to case. The Case-sensitive option changes the case comparison, but surrounding spaces are still trimmed.

The terms:

PARIS

and

      paRis

are grouped together by default. Turn on Case-sensitive if PARIS and paRis must appear separately.

When to use the distinct values feature?

Use distinct-value counts to inspect a category column before filtering or cleaning. For example, Paris, PARIS, Paris , Lyon, and one empty cell produce these results with case sensitivity off:

Displayed valueCountMeaning
paris3Case and surrounding spaces are grouped together.
lyon1A different category.
(Empty)1A missing value to review separately.

The result reports three unique values because the empty bucket is included. If your question is how many cities are named, the answer is two. A frequency of three for paris does not by itself mean three duplicate contacts: those rows may describe different people in the same city. Use a record identifier when deciding which rows are duplicates.

  • Leads Analysis - Get insights on your prospects list by running the distinct values counter on your prospect outreach status.
  • Geographical Analytics - Countries, Cities, and other location information can be aggregated to have a better understanding of your dataset.
  • Data Cleaning - Find outliers and irrelevant data by looking at the values with few occurrences. Learn more about Data Cleaning.