Your formula looks fine to me.
Are you perhaps importing your data into Column D, so that there might be a
possibility that there are "invisible" characters present, which wouldn't be
recognized by the formula.

Manually enter "rent" (no quotes) into a cell in Column D and see if you get
a return.

Also, there's the possibility that the values in Column E are not true
numbers.
Make a manual entry there also for a test.
--
HTH,

RD
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Please keep all correspondence within the Group, so all may benefit!
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"Wayne Cameron" wrote in message
...
I have labels in col D (multiple lines but only 7 different labels). I
wish
to add the cells in col E into 7 seperate totals (according to label).
This
is the formula I came up with but it is giving me an incorrect total of 0:
=SUMIF(D7:D36,"rent",E7:E36). I would appreciate it if someone could give
me
some guidance to correct my mistake. Thanks
--
D. W. Cameron