COUNTIFS SUMIFS with a criteria that is a RANGE

Is it possible / how do you navigate:

COUNTIFS or SUMIFS in a situation where the criteria is actually a range of options.
Ie. The range for the condition is: A3:A300
But the criteria is ‘John, Peter OR Simon’
OR the criteria is ‘D3, D4 OR D5’.

It could be done by doing a COUNTIF with a single criteria and then doing a + with the next COUNTIF formula. However if you expand this it can result in a massive formula and I suspect there I a better way of doing it.

All advice most welcome.

Thank you

have a look at this explanation page how to combine sum and sumif with multiple criteria

https://www.extendoffice.com/documen...column.html#a1

Both are useful, thank you.
IS there a way to replace "John";"Peter";"Simon" with "D3:D5" as the range of criteria?
Thanks.