Use findgrpups() and histcounts(). Something like this
names = ["cat" "dog" "cat" "cat" "dog"];
[n, unique_names] = findgroups(names);
freq = accumarray(n(:), 1);
T = table(unique_names(:), freq(:));
Result
>> T
T =
2×2 table
Var1 Var2
_____ ____
"cat" 3
"dog" 2
Write to excel file
writetable(T, 'filename.xlsx')
In R2019a and later, following will also work
names = ["cat" "dog" "cat" "cat" "dog"];
[freq, unique_names] = groupcounts(names(:));
T = table(unique_names(:), freq(:));
