What is the purpose of the DISTINCT function in Excel?

The DISTINCT function in Excel is designed to return unique values from a dataset, which means it filters out any duplicate entries and presents only one instance of each value. This function is particularly useful when analyzing data and you want to see all the different entries without repetition. For example, if you have a list of sales transactions that includes several duplicate entries for the same product, using the DISTINCT function will allow you to see only the unique products sold.

In the context of the other choices, while counting unique values or organizing data can be important tasks, they do not accurately reflect the specific function of DISTINCT. The purpose of retrieving all values does not align with the function's intent to filter for uniqueness, and sorting values in ascending order pertains to a different operation altogether. Thus, the focus of the DISTINCT function is exclusively on returning those unique entries from the provided data set.