Turn today's order log into a prep list
UNIQUE hands back each value once — the fast way to turn a raw log into a prep list.
Task:
You run a food truck. Today's point-of-sale log recorded every order as it came in, and the popular items repeat many times. In E2, use UNIQUE to list every distinct item sold today from B2:B9, so you know what to prep more of tomorrow.
Learning Objectives:
- Deduplicate a column with UNIQUE
- Read a spilled result across several cells
- Notice that UNIQUE preserves order rather than sorting
Solve without hints for +5 XP
Interactive Spreadsheet
The data in this exercise
This is the grid you start with. Cell references in the task — B6, C2 — point at the row numbers and column letters below.
| A | B | C | D | E | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Order Time | Item | Price | Items sold today | |
| 2 | 11:02 | Al Pastor Taco | 4.5 | ||
| 3 | 11:15 | Elote | 3.75 | ||
| 4 | 11:20 | Al Pastor Taco | 4.5 | ||
| 5 | 11:30 | Carnitas Taco | 4.5 | ||
| 6 | 11:45 | Al Pastor Taco | 4.5 | ||
| 7 | 12:05 | Elote | 3.75 | ||
| 8 | 12:20 | Horchata | 3 | ||
| 9 | 12:40 | Carnitas Taco | 4.5 |
What this exercise teaches (contains the answer)
UNIQUE walks the range once and remembers what it has already returned, so a taco that sold three times still only prints once — the same result Remove Duplicates gives you, except this one recalculates itself the moment tomorrow's log is pasted in rather than needing to be re-run every shift. It preserves the order values first appear in rather than resorting them, which is why Al Pastor Taco leads the list here: it was the first order of the day, not the best seller.