Stop wrestling with formulas to count unique families across criteria. The approach you're describing, manually counting unique families per produce type in a pivot table, is not a viable solution for a 400-row dataset, and it shouldn't have to be. Your frustration is a symptom of a deeper problem: traditional spreadsheet tools force users to become amateur programmers just to answer basic questions about their own data.
You have two clear needs: a unique count of families per produce type, and a count of families who sought two or more types. In a conventional spreadsheet, both require complex array formulas, helper columns, or pivot table workarounds that break down as data grows. The pivot table you built shows totals, not distinct families, because that's not what it's designed to do. You're not missing a hidden function, you're hitting a wall that thousands of users hit every day.
Here's the practical reality: this problem is trivial in an AI-native spreadsheet. You simply ask, "How many unique families requested each type of produce?" and the tool interprets your intent, deduplicates across the family column, and returns the answer. For the second question, you ask, "Which families appear more than once in the produce column, and how many are there?" No formulas, no pivot table configuration, no manual cross-referencing. The AI handles the logic, and you get back to analyzing service patterns instead of debugging formulas.
What you're experiencing is not a personal skill gap, it's a tool gap. The spreadsheet you're using was built for rows and columns, not for questions. It expects you to translate every analytical need into a precise sequence of functions, and it punishes you when the data doesn't fit neatly. That's not how modern data work should feel. You shouldn't have to search for the right terms to describe your own question. The tool should understand your question in plain language and answer it directly.
Your org provided services to families, and you need to understand those patterns to improve outcomes. That's the real task. The formula wrestling is a tax on your time and attention that an AI-native tool eliminates. Stop searching for the right formula syntax. Start asking the right questions in the language you already speak. Your data is waiting for you to use it.