i guess 1) to see if it could be done 2) aint elegant :) 3) i might put
something below so this seemed like a good solution

thanks for all suggestions.

jim

"Dave Peterson" wrote in message
...
Why not just use a giant number:

=SUMIF($A$24:$A$65536,A5,$L$24:$L$65536)

I used the maximum number of rows in a worksheet, but you could just make
it
bigger than anything you ever expect.

(I also dropped that + from =+sumif(). It isn't required.

jim sturtz wrote:

i have this formula (and some others like it) that are basically summing
from the 24th row to the bottom row of a list of items, which in this
case
is row 203.

=+SUMIF($A$24:$A$203,A5,$L$24:$L$203)

i continually add items into the list so i am continually having to do
'insert row' into the spreadsheet so as to maintain the pointer to the
last
row, ie 203, which then becomes 204, 205...221.

is it possible to make the $A$203 be $A$BottomRow where BottomRow can
then
be changed to whatever i want. i guess i would define a cell name to be
BottomRow and then fill in whatever value i need. would avoid having to
do
all those inserts. Or perhaps more simply i could put a special
character
value lets say 'bottom' and have excel scan column A from top to 99999
looking for the word 'bottom' and then using that row to be the value of
BottomRow.

hope this is clear.

thanks.

jim

--

Dave Peterson