Count consecutive dates as one

Hi all, first post here but I have used the site many time to find answers. Now I have a few myself.
I’m working on a spreadsheet for work and I have a few things I can’t figure out.

I need to track when employees take off sick, vacation, etc.

I enter dates in column C starting on row 82 and and I use a code from a pull down menu to track the type of leave they use. This code is entered in column H row 82. The code for sick leave is "*02" The issue I'm having is if the employee calls in sick two days or more in a row I want that to only count as one occurrence.

So right now if I track sick leave and they call in sick on 3 different dates in a year it counts it as 3 times. For example they call in sick on 2/3/2014, 4/4/2014 and 1/21/2015. However if they call in sick again on 1/22/2015 it counts it as 4 times. What I would like is if the dates are together to count it as 1 occurrence, so still only count as being sick 3 times. So separate dates 2/3/2014 and 4/4/2014 as 2 occurrence and dates together 1/21/2015 and 1/22/2015 as 1 occurrence. Any idea how I would do this?

The other thing I would like to do is be able to track this in a rolling year. For example I enter the date of the last time they called in sick and go back one year from that date to see how many times they called in sick or used vacation etc.


Thanks for any help you can give me.

I just tested this out and I guess it can't work if the cells are merged? Where I enter the dates it actually cells C and D. I can probably change that, it will just not look as nice.

Thak you for all the help Bernie, you are awesome

I'm trying to setup a similar type tool. I've got a database of call logs that I need to count based on the employee ID(primary key) then date and only within the last 12 weeks. Its currently setup to countifs the ID then the date within a defined range. I need it to still do this but count consecutive dates as 1 occurrence.

Any ideas would be helpful.