Excel Pivot Tables using date information

I am trying to produce a pivot table with regions down the row axis and month+year (mmm-yy) as column headings, with unique case numbers counted in the ‘values’ field. The basic case data is imported from Access and includes a full date (dd-mm-yyyy). I want the columns to count all the cases in each month, but the table maps each recorded day as a column. I have tried the following, all of which result in the same outcome: (1) reformatting the data as mmm-yy; (2) doing a ‘paste special’ (as ‘values’) to a new, blank, workbook; (3) changing the date to 00-mm-yyyy, which was partly successful (there was a single column for each month, but the 2011 months were plotted to the left of the 2010 months, and the only sort options offered are A-Z). Someone has suggested the only solution is VBA, which is beyond my (and colleagues’) ability. Is there anything else I could try within Excel to make this work?