Reporting on the number of unique parent objects with child objects

Have you ever tried to find out how many of your Accounts have Opportunities? It sounds simple at first, but when you run a report on Opportunities you can only report on the total number of Opportunities, not Accounts. Here’s a simple solution:

1. Create a new Formula Field on Accounts
2. Name the field “Account Counter”
3. Choose Number for the Output Type
4. Just type in the number 1 for your formula
5. Save the new field

Now go back to your report on Opportunities, on the Select the information to summarize step, check the Sum box next to your new “Account Counter” field and click Run Report.

See what happened? At the bottom of the report, you now have the total number of Opportunities as well as the number of unique Accounts.

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2. Deriving Website from Email Addresses
3. Tracking the duration of a call
4. Creating a Formula Field to Sort Records in True Alphabetical Order
5. Standard Objects and the curse of the MetaData API

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