I'm guessing the best way to do this would be to use a database but my "stone
age" agency that I work for insists on using Excel so I'm sort of stuck. I
have a counter page that I'd like to automate and I'm wondering if you excel
gurus out there might lend me a brain cell and tell me what the best way of
achieving this might be.

Sheet 1 = Patient count. Like a database table with headers and each row is
a new record. Headers include Name, Age, DOB, ClientID, Insurance Type,
AdmitDate, DischargeDate, ...that sort of thing.

Sheet 3 = Bed Days. Bed Days is a counter page which has the dates in a
month running down one column and a count of clients with 4 different types
of insuraces across the top (State, Contract, Oregon, Private) with totals at
the bottom. The next month would start 5 cells over to the right and it's
getting a little crazy (December 08 is columns AU:AY!).

The Old Way:
What my secratary was doing was going through the Patient Count sheet and
counting how many clients of each insurance type we'd have in a given day and
manually enter them next to the corresponding date. (OMG! There has to be a
better way!)

The New Way:
What I'm looking for is a formula that looks at the Patient Count sheet and
collects this data for me and then enters in on the Bed Days sheet. I could
change the layout of the page so there'd be only 5 columns running down the
sheet (Date, State, Contract, Private, Oregon) but I'm not sure how to get
Sheet3 to collect and enter data for specific dates. I'm thinking I could
use a CountIF statement, asking it to collect the counts from a specific type
of insurance if the date that's listed is within the admit and discharge
dates of the client but entering a formula like this in all the cells seems
to be asking the sheet to do a LOT of calculating. I'm not so sure that this
would be the best way of obtaining what I'm after.

If this were SQL I'd say the statement should be:
SELECT State, Contract, Private, Oregon
FROM Sheet1
WHERE Sheet3_Date is between Sheet1_AdmitDate AND Sheet1_DischargeDate
....but I don't know how that translates in Excel-speak.

Any help with this one? Much thanks in advance! You guys have always come
through with brilliant suggestions. I really appreciate it! Please let me
know if any of this is unclear and I'll try to explain better. I can send
an example if needed but I need to know where to send it to please.
--Dax

--
I would give my left hand to be ambidextrous!