Excel Guide
SUMIF and SUMIFS, Explained With Examples
"Sum this column, but only the rows where that other column says West" is one of the most common real-world spreadsheet tasks — and SUMIF is built exactly for it.
SUMIF: one condition
SUMIF takes three arguments: the range to check, the condition, and the range to actually sum (if it's different from the range you checked):
Read it left to right: "look through column A, find rows equal to 'West', and sum the matching rows in column B." The first range is what gets tested; the third is what gets added up.
SUMIFS: more than one condition
Once you need two or more conditions, switch to SUMIFS — note the argument order flips, with the sum range coming first:
This sums column C where column A is "West" and column B is greater than 1000. Every condition must match — SUMIFS has no built-in "or" logic between range/criteria pairs.
Criteria beyond exact matches
The condition in SUMIF/SUMIFS can be a comparison, not just an exact value:
When to reach for SUMPRODUCT instead
SUMIFS only supports AND logic between conditions. For more complex logic — like summing where region is West or East — SUMPRODUCT with array comparisons is the more flexible (if less readable) tool. For most everyday spreadsheets, though, SUMIFS covers the vast majority of cases.
Try it yourself
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