First test with timestamp included in the date, and the date being one of the
extremes being tested and the formula does not work.

For example: in your test-data hereunder if I put only one record for dept A
for date March 15; and if I test for Jan 1st till Marc 15th for dept A, I get
one number less than the actual number.

Just FYI.

"DKS" wrote:

Ron,

Your code worked. I had made a mistake whilst typing the formula you gave.
Instead of typing A:A as you have mentioned, I inadvertently typed A2:A25000
to signify the full range. And apparently with that it did not work.

But now I have corrected the formula and it seems to be working like charm.
I still have to test with time-stamps but I believe it should work.

thanks for your help.

"Ron Coderre" wrote:

I tried scrambling the dates and DeptNames and I still get correct (to me)
results.

Try this:
Play with my posted example and see if it gives correct results under those
conditions.
-If yes
...Try putting some of your data into the example and test again.
-If No, then the data is the problem and you'll need to post some sample
data so we can see what you're dealing with?

Either way, please update us on your progress.

***********
Regards,
Ron

XL2003, WinXP


"DKS" wrote:

Hi Don, Ron

Thanks for your suggestions. I tried them but they did not work. I forgot
to mention that the data may not always be sorted by date. I hope that does
not affect your logic?

To give you extra info on what went wrong: the formula of Don gave me an
extremely high number. For example: I had data for one calendar year but the
result of Don's formula was more than 366. This is not possible because
there are only 366 unique dates in a year. The formula of Ron returned zero
as a result.

Thanks.

"Ron Coderre" wrote:

Try something like this:

With this structure in A1:A16
Date Dept
1/1/2007 A
1/1/2007 A
1/1/2007 A
1/1/2007 B
1/1/2007 C
1/1/2007 C
1/1/2007 C
1/15/2007 A
1/15/2007 B
1/15/2007 C
1/15/2007 C
2/1/2007 A
2/1/2007 A
2/1/2007 B
2/1/2007 B

And...
E1: (StartDate eg: 01/01/2007)
F1: (EndDate eg: 01/31/2007)
G1: (DeptName eg: A)

Then this formula returns the number of unique dates in that range where the
DeptName matches the name in G1:
=SUMPRODUCT(--ISNUMBER(MATCH(ROW(INDEX(A:A,E1):INDEX(A:A,F1)),(B 2:B20=G1)*(A2:A20=E1)*(A2:A20<=F1)*A2:A20,0)))

Using the above example, the formula returns: 2
Dept A appears at least once with 1/1/2007 and 1/15/2007

Is that something you can work with?
***********
Regards,
Ron

XL2003, WinXP


"DKS" wrote:

I have a sheet, with each row containing one record. Column A contains a
date, and column B contains a department. The contents of the column A
(date) are either a simple date "dd/mm/yyyy" format or a timestamp e.g.
"dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss". Duplicates are allowed in Column A, Column B, Column
A + Column B.

I needed (ideally) a worksheet function that would allow me to obtain the
following information:

Based on a START DATE, END DATE and DEPT NAME return to me the number of
times I have the DEPT NAME occuring in my data for between the START DATE and
END DATE (both dates included) but counting multiple rows for the same date
as only 1 record. Thus if I have 27 rows for the same department with date
July 15, then it should give me only the value 1.

The time-part in the timestamp format can be ignored. It exists because of
input data coming from various sources and some sources store time and some
do not store time.

How could I do the above with a worksheet function?

Many thanks.