Maximum value for each distinct name

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Great - I hadn't seen that function inside Pivot before. And it took me a few minutes to work out how to set Max as the function on Rating. Double click on Rating and set User Defined to Max button THEN and only THEN drag the Rating into the Data Fields

However, one extra challenge - for any bird, the pivot table gives me the max Photo rating, but it doesnt tell me which photo has the max rating. Ideally I would l like to see a output table with 3 columns: Bird Name, Max-Rating, Name of Photo that has that Max-Rating

Is this possible?

Hmm - I don't understand the purpose of that requirement according to bird photography trip, prioritising which birds I am likely to see, that need a better photo. In other words. You can't take the same photo a second time to get a better quality, so what will that additional info provide? And another issue: Is there a guarantee that highest rating for a given bird is only arwarded to a single photo?

Anyway - I don't see a method to get the name of the photo(s) having the max rating within the same pivot. Name / No of a photo would introduce a new category, having its own Max - Rating and you'll end up with your orignal table reformatted / categorized). I assume you'd need to some lookup of the max rating in your original data range.

Having a PT with a species and correspinding max rating of its photos, you have enough information to start. You can sort the PT data to find the poorest max values; then you may sort your original data by rating, and filter it to only show you the chosen poorest species - giving you 100% available information about all its available photos... Having some single photo reference next to max rating (out of possibly many with that max rating, and one of many in total) is just a fake instead of "as much as possible info in a spreadsheet table before I go".

Good points - that should work - many thanks for the clear thinking!