Looking for a formula to help group/count complicated data

[xcelhelp]

I work with lists of data that have thousands of data entries in the list. I need to be able to group all of the similar data together and then generate a count for each group. The problem that I'm having is that some of the data is slightly different from each other, but I still want it to be in the same category. For example, this is what my list might look like.

Dog
Dogs
White dog
Cat
cat
cats

All of that data is slightly different from each other, yet you can still tell that all the top data should go into one category together for dogs, and all the bottom data should go into another category for cats. Is there any way to have a formula to get this type of data grouped together and then counted? Thanks for your help!

[Ken Puls]

I'm curious... how many unique entries are there? You could run a formula down to look for "Dog" and "Cat" to check if it exists in the cell, but if you have hundreds of possibilities, that could take some time...

I'm just trying to figure out the best way to approach this. Could you post a larger sample of what you're looking at? (You can add a workbook to the post by double clicking the "Reply to Thread" button.)

[Bob Phillips]

(You can add a workbook to the post by double clicking the "Reply to Thread" button.

I didn't know that! It works at VBAX too :)

[Ken Puls]

I didn't know that! It works at VBAX too :)

Wow! I think I just earned my weekend off! It's not every day that I get to teach you something, Bob! :)