The SUMIF function in Excel is used to add up cell values based on a certain condition. It is useful for summarizing large data sets for reports and analyses. The syntax for the SUMIF function has three arguments: range, criteria, and sum_range (optional) . The range argument is the range of cells to be evaluated by criteria, the criteria argument is the condition that must be met, and the sum_range argument is the range of cells to be summed if different from the range argument.

For example, if you have a column of numbers and you want to sum only the values that are larger than 5, you can use the following formula: =SUMIF(B2:B25,">5") . If you want to apply the criteria to one range and sum the corresponding values in a different range, you can use the formula =SUMIF(B2:B5, "John", C2:C5), which sums only the values in the range C2:C5, where the corresponding cells in the range B2:B5 equal "John".

It is important to note that any text criteria or any criteria that includes logical or mathematical symbols must be enclosed in double quotation marks. If the criteria is numeric, double quotation marks are not required. Additionally, the SUMIF function returns incorrect results when you use it to match strings longer than 255 characters or to the string #VALUE! .