Excel wizards - I need your help

[Flier]

I have an absence spreadsheet where I want to add up the different types of absence, so, for example, if joe bolggs in the month of January has 12 sick days and 10 holidays, I have sick days marked S and holidays marked H, how do I get excel to look at the whole monthe and tell me how many of each type of absence there was?
I'm sure there is a way, I used to be very good with excel but, with no longer working ......

'count', I think.

Right, assuming you have the dates in A2:A32, "Joe Bloggs" in B1 and either "H", "S" or nothing in B2:B32, then number of sickdays =COUNTIF(B2:B32,"S") and number of holidays =COUNTIF(B2:B32,"H").

use COUNTIF(range,"S")

ie. if the criteria you are counting is text, put it in quotes and make sure it is exactly as in the cells.

I didn't know the answer off top of head so had to open up spreadsheet and check!

mumsnet to the rescue again! thanks, although, I have just been playing around with COUNTIF and SUMIF and am not quite getting there yet but thank you all