Does the Criteria1 column contain text, or dates formatted as mmmyyyy?
If it's text, your example should work.
If it's dates, you could enter a date in another cell, and refer to it,
e.g.: ="<"&P1

Or, use two columns for the date in the criteria area, e.g.:

Criteria1 Criteria1
="<"&P1
=""&Q1

where P1 contains 5/1/05 and Q1 contains 5/31/05

Mark Rucker wrote:
Greetz,
I want to use DSUM on a data set. I want to sum values in a field where the
criteria is setup as NOT EQUAL rather than EQUALS. Like this:
CRITERIA1
<"MAY2004"

Which would give me a sum of all values where field/column CRITERIA1 is not
equal to MAY2004. But I can't figure out how to get it to do this for me.


--
Debra Dalgleish
Excel FAQ, Tips & Book List
http://www.contextures.com/tiptech.html