Automatically sum values for a given category in a list?

[plaintomato]

This question has to have been asked an answered, but I'm not finding it...

PART 1:

Say I have a spreadsheet with a list of Check Numbers, Payees, and Check Amounts.

I want to automatically sum all of the Check Amounts paid to a each Payee in the list.

My thought was to create a another table with a list of of the Payees, and then use a column with a formula that would look up the listed Payee and return a total of all the Check Values paid to that Payee.

What would that formula be?


PART 2:

No lets say I have a list that also includes the Project the employee was working on, so now it is Check Numbers, Project, Payee, Check Amount.

Now I want to create a separate table with a list each Payee on a Project, and I want a formula to tell me the total of checks issued per Payee on a Given Project.

For example, the source table would include:
Check No., Project, Payee, Check Amount
122, House, Joe, $1
123, House, Pete, $5
124, House, Pete, $6
125, House, Joe, $4
126, House, Pete, $5
127, Yard, Joe, $3
128, Yard, Pete, $2
129, Yard, Joe, $1

And I want a table that would show:
Project, Employee, formula to calculate Total Paid
House, Joe, $5
House, Pete, $16
Yard, Joe, $4
Yard, Pete, $2

How would a formula look up the Project and Employee and return a sum of all related payments?

Thanks in advance for any help.

[NBVC]

A Pivot table would be the quickest and most powerful way to summarize your data:

Pivot Tables

or you can manually list your names and use SUMIF function

[mahju]

If all the data is arranged in columns for each heading You can use a pivot table to do the job for both.

upload a dummy sheet to see how data is arranged

Thanks

Regards

[plaintomato]

Thanks to both.

A Pivot table would be the quickest and most powerful way to summarize your data:

Pivot Tables

or you can manually list your names and use SUMIF function

@NBVC

I found this response from you to a similar problem on bigresource -
Use Sumproduct variation instead..
e.g. =Sumproduct(--(person_range=person),--(activity_range=activity),sum_range)

I didn't understand it because I understood Sumproduct to be a multiplication function and I had no idea what the "--" does in a formula. I'm one of those people who can't use something just because it works, I have to understand how and why it works before I can put my faith in it.

While I was waiting on a response to my posting here I tried to find out what the "--" does. Kind of a pain since searching for "--" doesn't yield much, but I found this excellent resource on the Sumproduct formula: http://www.xldynamic.com/source/xld....T.html#explain

Now that I know that the "--" makes Excel ignore the error caused by trying to put a text entry into a multiplication formula, I see how Sumproduct can be the greatest thing since sliced mammoth loaf. At least for me.

Hopefully this extra explanation helps some other lost soul sometime. Thanks for your help folks.