On Mon, 30 May 2005 12:07:35 +0100, "Bob Phillips"
<phillips@tiscali.co.uk> wrote:

>Hi Mark,
>
>That is a good question.
>
>If you were testing for a straight equals a value, you would just use say
>
>=SUMIF(A:A,1)
>
>But if you want to test for less than, you would think you could use
>
>=SUMIF(A:A,<1)
>
>but you cannot, you have to wrap it with quotes which SUMIF evaluates
>
>=SUMIF(A:A,"<1")
>
>It gets more interesting if the value you want to compare is in another cell
>say B1. Straight equals comparison
>
>=SUMIF(A:A,B1)
>
>Less than comparison
>
>=SUMIF(A:A,"<"&B1)
>
>because the formula needs to get the value from B1, not the text B1, and the
>& is used to concatenate to a text value.


this was very educational,
thank you very much Bob

Mark