The Microsoft Excel application is one of the greatest programs that Microsoft has ever been able to create and without a doubt a software without which you just can’t do without if you are an Excel consultant. Because of its easy to use and learn implementation, Excel has become hugely popular all over the world by small businesses as well as the world’s top firms. On top of that it has got a gamut of different mathematical functions within it which can make intricate maths problems a piece of cake! One of the best ones for an Excel consultant performing financial analysis is the SUMIF function which has made the life of analysts even easier!

What the Microsoft Excel SumIf function does is that it selects information based on criteria and then with it sums up all those data and gives the user the required result. So, at first it looks for all the data within the range the user mentioned and then after extracting them it adds them up and gives the user the desired result. Even it can look for items which are not of the same person but of similar types and draw out the required bits of information for processing.

The Excel SUMIF function takes three parameters namely range, criteria, sum_range in the order of SUMIF (range, criteria, sum range). The three parameters are required in this case as all of them have something to do with the ultimate result of the function. Here is a little detail about the arguments of the SUMIF function:

Range: Here the range is inserted by the user and refers to the range of columns which the function needs to search for the particular trait that the user is looking for. For example the user can mention “B1” as the column to search for a specific criterion. It is absolutely necessary for the function to work.

Criteria: The criteria field here is the characteristic or the feature that the user is looking for prior to extracting the data from the Excel sheet. So, any criterion the user inputs will be the search key for the function during data extraction. For example, if the criteria is set to “>32” it will look for all the data present in the sheet and within the range which are greater than 32. It is also required as well.

Sum range: The sum range field has the actual data values corresponding to the range columns present which have satisfied the required criterion. These data are therefore collected only after it was checked that their counterparts are in order with the criteria field’s requirements. For example, if the A1 cell matches the required criterion then its corresponding B1 can be the sum_range.

The MS Excel SUMIF function’s fields can take different types of value both numeric and alphabetical as well. For example it can take the argument sequence SUMIF (A2:A4, 2000, B2:B4) as well as SUMIF (family, “>23”, C2) showing that it can take as input both numerical and alphabetical streams of data. Moreover, additional criteria feature is that it can take column names of a sheet for searching through it as is evident from SUMIF (A2, D2, C3).

Here we have presented some of the extra features and nuances that are possessed by the Excell SUMIF function:

For checking for any character or a stream of characters there are special inputs to be provided in the criteria field like “?” and “*” respectively. They search for character or streams of them in their range and then do the actual sum. For actually searching for these two characters, a tilde (~) is needed to be provided before it.

There are certain sub-functions associated with the Microsoft SUMIF function which can be used as well, like the Excel COUNTIF function which is required to keep a count of anything in a page be it the number of occurrences of a particular string or that of a particular number. Also there is this conditional function called IF present which evaluates the actual condition from two or more possibilities and then evaluates data.

Moreover a host of data stream processing functions like DAVERAGE, DCOUNT, and DSUM etc are also present.
The SUMIF function is thus really helpful for anyone dealing with accounts and is available for use in Excel 2000, 2003, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2011 versions.