In this case you could use the `mysql_count` function ( mysql_count($tableName, $whereEtc) ). Used in the below format:

$jeffCount = mysql_count('project_management', "`current_owner` = 'jeff'");

This would return a count for every project associated with Jeff's name. If you needed to filter by other parameters (like project_status = 'active' for example) you could add that to the second part, setting it up like a where clause concatenating with AND/OR etc.

Please let me know if this helps you at all for your situation.

In response to that post - I cannot seem to wrap my head around getting this to work in my case.

I want to be able to grab a count of the number of records that are assigned values.

For instance, my table is:  project_management  (that's the top level cms section).

Inside that - I have a field of "current_owner".

There's a list of possible selections a person can assign a project to - names of my team.

I just wanted to drop some numbers so, at a glance, I can see how many projects are in each person's cue.

(echo number of records where "jeff" is the value in field "current_owner" for instance.)

And then I can pull for each team member after that.  

I can't seem to wrap my head around this solution.

Thanks, in advance, for any help!

--JH