I have a formula question. Can someone help me?

[ladyinchainmail]

I set up an electronic checkbook on Excel and I categorized my
purchases/debits. I want to sort out all the different purchases/debits and
total each of them on another worksheet. I have no clue what formula
functions to use or even how to go about this. Can someone please help me
figure out how to set up the formula?

 

[Susan]

ladyinchainmail -
one way would be to select the entire area and choose Data, Filter,
Autofilter. then you'd be able to choose which debits you want to see
and it would list them. caution - make sure you list all the debits
the same way every time - i.e.

clothes cleaning
clothes cleaning
clothes cleaning
NOT
cleaning clothes
dry cleaners
clothes cleaning

because the autofilter will see each different entry as one separate
entry. if they are all listed the same it will show them all to you,
then you can sum just the ones that are showing.
hope that helps.

susan

 

[Bernie Deitrick]

ladyinchainmail,

The bottom line is - don't use formulas, use a pivot table. Select all your data, the choose Data
/ Pivot table... and click OK.

Then drag the description button to the row field, and the amount to the data field. Excel will
automatically create a summary table with totals based on your purchase debit descriptions.

HTH,
Bernie
MS Excel MVP