Collapsing data from a single column (Excel or Access or whatever)

[Greg the dogsitter]

I have data...something like this:

1 A
1 B
2 A
2 B
3 C
3 D
4 A
4 B
5 C
5 D
6 E
6 F

I want to show the total count of each pair of letters, like so:
A B 3
C D 2
E F 1

I can't think of a way to pull this off besides using a script to turn the pairs into two columns, and then sorting and grouping. Is there a better way?

GtDS