Excel microsoft excel 2007

[Pastor Milton]

I am attempting to sum a column of figures but only want to sum the ones that have a certain name in another column. For instance, column E has costs for certain items. Column F has the names of the people related to those costs. If I want to find out how the figures for just one individual, how would I go about writing that formula in Microsoft Excel 2007?
Thanks

 

[heafar]

try using SUMIF

ex: =SUMIF(F1:F5,"PETER",E1:E5)

F1:F5 would be the area where the names are, PETER is the name to look for, and E1:E5 is the range where the formula will look for the values to sum.