Have you tried using Excel Solver

First a little prep work....

A1:A1 (your list of values)
B1:B10 (leave blank)
C1: =A1*B1
(copy that fomula down through C10

C11: =SUM(C1:C10)

Now to use Solver....
ToolsSolver
Set Cell: C11
Equal to the Value of: 1173.76
By Changing Cells: B1:B10
Subject to the Constraints....
(click the add button and constrain B1:B10 to Binary)
Click [OK]
Click [Solve]

Excel will toggle cells B1:B10 between 1 and 0 until it comes up with a
combination that sums to 1,173.76

Does that help?

***********
Regards,
Ron

XL2002, WinXP-Pro


"Dave O" wrote:

The answer is:
$725.90
$240.16
$207.70

I've written a program that applies a brute force approach to the task-
it checks every possible combination of the "pool" of numbers to arrive
at the target total. The brute force idea works for comparatively
small pools, but since the number of possible combinations doubles with
each additional pool member the processing time increases
commensurately. One poster to this newsgroup wanted to process a list
of 100 numbers, which amounts to
1,267,650,600,228,230,000,000,000,000,000 possible combinations and
would require the resources of a major government (or maybe just the
NSA) to process.

How many of these do you have? I don't mind doing a few for you.