Struggling with a complicated SUM/SUMIF

[rtpud]

Here's the rundown:

Category 1Project ID

Alpha     Project1

Beta      Project2

Alpha     Project3

Gamma     Project4

Beta      Project5

Beta      Project6

Each project is associated with a category.
In a separate sheet, I have a list of a package of work for a project, so it looks like this:
Project 6 (then columsn of details)
Project 6 (then columns of details)
Project 5 (then columns of details)
Project 4 (then columns of details).

Then, in a completely other sheet, I want to calculate the number of work packages for each category...but I don't want to list the category in the work package sheet....

e.g. I need to count Project 6 twice, and Project 5 once and return 3 work packages run within category beta...

Anyone have ideas (preferrably without using macros).
Thanks

 

[GlennUK]

In your rundown list, have an extra column to count the number of occurences of each project in the work package sheet ( using the COUNTIF function ), and then create a pivottable of the rundown list, to summarize by category.