I had to count the number of members in an Outlook PDL (Personal Distribution List). Now this is what the issue I faced in office and I had to find a way to do that. It took a lot of time with lots of trials and errors but here it is in steps:
1. Click on the + sign in the outlook to expand the PDL to its individual members.
2. Select all or Ctrl+A to select all the individual members in the PDL.
3. Copy or Ctrl+C.
4. Paste that into Microsoft Word.
5. In Microsoft Word, press Ctrl+F or open the find dialogue window.
6. Select the Replace tab.
7. In the 'Find what:' field, type in ";" without the quotes.
8. In the 'Replace with:' field, type in "^|" without the quotes, you could also use"; ^|" without the quotes.
9. Click on the 'Replace' or 'Replace All' button.
10. Now you have a list which you can easily copy paste into to excel... simple isn't it? And oh by the way, after the replace procedure is complete, Microsoft Word automatically gives the count :-)
If the above steps don't work, follow the above 7 steps, then click on the More button in a section called Replace. When you click on the 'More' button, the window expands to give some more options. Click on the Special button and it will give a list. Select 'Manual Line Break' and it will automatically populate the 'Replace with:' field with the special character ^|. Then click on 'Replace' or 'Replace All'.
Here is a screenshot for your reference from Microsoft Word:
By the way its just a pre-programmed feature in Microsoft Word that is used here. I haven't tried Wordpad or other word systems that are available. It's quite possible the same thing or probably even better ways are possible using other systems but I am not aware of it right now. Well I have used Windows 7 and Word 2007 for this demo purpose.
I know there should be a way in Microsoft Excel. When I find out how, I will update it here.
Peace!
