Details for SUMIF in google sheets

Google sheets SUMIF is one of the most powerful functions. I can write a book about it however, I want to summarize my answer to many questions I receive from beginners concerning it.

I will cover in this post for instance the summing of candidates’ votes and answer questions such as what and how can we make use of google sheets SUMIF in its basic form so that you start using it in your projects.

What is the SUMIF function?

The simple answer: It is a combination between SUM + IF. It will sum the values based on a condition, however, The classical answer is:

It is a premade function in Google Sheets, which calculates the sum of values in a range based on a true or false condition, and its typed as follows:

=SUMIF

It is a very useful tool if you want to filter a range based on a condition and then calculate the sum based on that filter.

Read more about it here.

Syntax

SUMIF(range, criterion, [sum_range])

• range: It is a group of cells you want to test against a criterion. In our example, google sheets will examine all the cells that contain “Trump” and all the cells that contain “Biden”; when selecting the range, ask yourself whom I am going to test: “Biden” or “Trump”?
• criterion: Type your answer to the question above in the range parameter between 2 quotations. Your answer will be what you want to test against the range parameter. In our example, “Trump” is our answer and our first criterion which will sum only the votes related to it.
• [sum_range]: We use it for summing values from a different column. In our case, it is the Votes column.

Conditions

In short, “Trump” in our example above is the condition, and it is certainly a text condition, now let us discover in addition to text condition the different types of conditions:

• Text conditions: Google sheet will scan the Candidate column as in our example and will examine the cells if they include “Trump” so that the condition is true and sum the Votes column that is related to “Trump”.
• Comparison Operator’s conditions: I will discuss them in detail in the coming posts, here I will mention them only:
  • Equal =
  • Not equal <>
  • Less than <
  • Greater than >
  • Less than or equal to <=
  • Greater than or equal to >=
• Dates conditions: Consider you have a company and you want to know the sum of your company’s sales on certain dates such as the Christmas season or summer time, in this case, using the dates condition is very fundamental which I will write a separate post about it supported by many examples.

Points to remember

• Firstly, as we are dealing with functions, always remember to type the equal sign before it without any spaces.
• Secondly, in addition, it is good to know that the criterion parameter can take texts, numbers, and dates, and we will discuss them in detail in other posts.
• Thirdly, the [sum_range] parameter is written between 2 square brackets because it is optional.
• Fourthly, you can always find shortcuts to select a range of cells here.

Conclusion for SUMIF in google sheets

To sum up, in this series, we covered how to use SUMIF in google sheets function to calculate the sum of votes for each candidate in a specific election. I will write more posts and give more examples to make you use SUMIF effectively.

When you have a table about elections, SUMIF is essential to filter the candidate column and sum their number of votes simply by using the SUMIF function.

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