Calc Rows between matching entries

[ShaneLevene]

Hey everyone, I’m new here so just a short Hello and hoping you’re all well.

I have a one column list of over 3000 rolls of a dice. E.g (shows it as a row here, but it is a column).

3
6
5
3
2
3
4
4
2
2
3
etc, etc

I need a way to know how many rolls before the same number came up again. So, in the above snippet of the data, if I checked #3 it would return a result of: 3, 2, 5 (from the 1st #3 to the 2nd was 3 rolls, from the 2nd to 3rd was 2 rolls and from the 3rd to the 4th was 5 rolls). I could of course count all this manually but going through a data set of 3000 figures 6 separate times would be very time consuming and just one error could throw the statistics off. Rows between each matching item would also work, I’d just have to add +1 to each value returned.

Can anyone help me with a formula that could do this for me?

Many Thanks in advance, Shane.

[mikekaganski]

Assuming that your data is in column A, starting from A1: enter this formula to B3:

=ROW()-MAXIFS(ROW($A$1:$A2);$A$1:$A2;$A3)

Unfortunately, this doesn’t work for B2 using formula like =ROW()-MAXIFS(ROW($A$1:$A1);$A$1:$A1;$A2) - I have just filed tdf#119137 for that; so for the second row, you’d need to count manually (first row, naturally, doesn’t have previous rows, including matching).

[ShaneLevene]

Mike, thanks for your time and reply. I just found the answer by creating a validity list and then using an IF and MATCH formula and then dragging it down. It works for all numbers as soon as I choose it from my validity list.

But thank you anyway. It looks like you was on the right path and not too far away from what I eventually did. It wasn’t my cleverness which solved it I found a similar problem elsewhere on the web and struck gold with that.

[mikekaganski]

Please edit the answer to include the formulas and steps to your answer, to make it useful to those who might seek for a similar solution. The goal of the site is not only to help those who ask a question, but also to keep solutions so that others could benefit.