Might just go Lad name, Date and reason and reason count, if possible please?
Sure -- Excel can do ANYTHING

It sounds like a log file, and would probably look like this

IS this what you want?


Capture.JPG

On 5/21 Paul had 6 absences - 3 for lady tourist, 1 for spider, and 2 for mother in law

My dummy data might be unrealistic, but I was just thinking on the data structure