Formula to add up cells with certain characters

[tmac2o03]

I'm looking for some help on creating a fomula to add up cells on one worksheet to another worksheet. I have a list of names on one work sheet and they are each on a different row. I want to have a formula to add up each of the names to another worksheet. for example on work sheet 1, I would have 5 cells with Tom on them and 12 cells with Bob on them. HOw can I create a formula to add up how many toms and how many bobs there are and continue to add the cells up when adding additonal cells with their names without manually counting the cells? and keep track for which cells are from a date range?

If you need more explanation I can explain further.

[martindwilson]

if names are in column A in any other cell put
=COUNTIF(A:A,"tom")
or =COUNTIF(A:A,"bob")

[tmac2o03]

Now if I used the IfCount and i want to count the number of names in a row duringg a certain time period with dates in a different column. How would i write the formula?

[martindwilson]

ah ,it's 00:20 and i've just got back from a very boozy affair!
can you give examples in an excel file showing what you have and what result you want?

[daddylonglegs]

You could use SUMPRODUCT, e.g. if names are in column A and dates in column B and you want to count Tom's entries for April 2008

=SUMPRODUCT((A1:A100="Tom")*(B1:B100>=DATE(2008,4,1))*(B1:B100<=DATE(2008,4,30)))

If you want you can define your date period by putting the start and end dates of the period in two cells, let's say C2 and C3 and then amending the formula to

=SUMPRODUCT((A1:A100="Tom")*(B1:B100>=C2)*(B1:B100<=C3))

[tmac2o03]

Thanks for your help. The formula works perfect for what I wanted.