[diggeryo]

I have Microsoft Office 2007 installed.

I have an Excel file with a column that contains names. I have close to 40,000 rows, but out of those 40,000 names, some repeat. Is there a formula I can use or command I can run on the column that will automatically go through it and convert each set of unique names to a sequential number?

Obviously, I could run a "Filter" or the "Remove Duplicates" command to get a list of the unique names, and then do a "Find and Replace," but if there are, for example, 500 unique names, that could take quite a while. Is there anyway to have this done automatically?

For example, let's says this is my column:

Mike
Melissa
Keith
John
Mike
Ralph
James
Mike

I would want it to look like this:

01
02
03
04
01
05
06
01


Thanks for any help.