If you use Excel you probably know about the SUM and COUNT functions. If you’re ready to go a step further you should also know about a couple of simple and very useful variations of those — SUMIF and COUNTIF.
It’s fast and easy to get basic totals using the SUM function. But how do you get a total for only for cells that meet certain criteria? Of course, you could manually create formulas pointing to each cell you want to include – but you are way too smart for that, right?
With the SUMIF function you can easily look for a specific value in column A and then only add the corresponding values in column B when it meets your criteria.
For example, let’s see how easy it is to use SUMIF to find the sum of the sales in the East region.
Syntax: =SUMIF(range, criteria, sum range)
Result = $16,257
Similarly, let’s see how COUNTIF can tell us how many entries there are for the East region.
Syntax: =COUNTIF(range, criteria)
Result = 3
You can also use AVERAGEIF in the same way as these. Check it out in this video.
Work Smarter Not Harder 