On column C type this formula
=SUM(--IF($A$2:$A$9=A2,$B$2:$B$9DATEVALUE("12/31/04")))
Array entered ( ctrl+shift+enter)

and copy is down your list

Then using filter hide everthing greater than zero
In your example it will leave sue and mary




"Galway" wrote in message
...
i have dates that i'm working with... for example...for one contact person
i
might have 3 or 4 different dates...
column A column B
james 12/24/04
james 1/05/05
james 2/13/05
sue 12/3/04
sue 12/15/04
nick 12/5/04
nick 1//6/05
mary 12/01/04

what i need to do is identify contacts prior to 12/31/04 for those
contacts
that have only dates 12/31 and before. Some of these contacts have both
dates in december '04 and for afterwards in '05. I need only the
contacts
that have just 12/31 and before dates. But again some of the contacts
that i
don't need have dates 12/31 and after....these are the ones i want to
eliminate. Is there any way that i can do this without separating just
12/31/04 because some of the ones I don't want have the december
dates....i'm
sorry if i'm not making any sense... so with the above example... out of
the
above, the only ones i want are "sue & mary" ... any suggestions?