"Epinn" skrev i en meddelelse
...
A2:A5 = 100, 200, 300, 400 respectively.
B2:B5 = 5, 15, 30, 40 respectively.
A1 and B1 are both blanks.

=SUMIF(A2:A5,"300",B2:B5) yields 30. Okay.

I know I shouldn't do the following but if I have a typo, I prefer Excel to
give me an error ......

This is confusing.

=SUMIF(A2:A5,"300",B1:B2) yields 15. ??? B1 = blank and B2 = 5.
=SUMIF(A2:A5,"300",B2:B3) yields 30. ??? B2 = 5 and B3 = 15.
=SUMIF(A2:A5,"300",B3:B4) yields 40. ??? B3 = 15 and B4 = 30.

I rather have an error telling me of uneven range.

Any comments?

Epinn


It's not really an error. "Normally" the third argument is a range
"parallel" to the range in the first argument, but this need not be so.
Actually the third argument need only one cell, Excel does the rest!

If you have a first argument of A2:A5 and a third argument of B1,
Excel will resize B1 to hold 4 cells, i.e. B1:B4. Likewise for B3:B4,
which will be resized to B3:B6.

Now, =SUMIF(A2:A5,300,B1) will return 15, because 300 is in the third
cell in A2:A5 and Excel will grab the value in the *corresponding third
cell* in
B1:B4, i.e. B3.

The same principle goes for your two other examples.

--
Best regards
Leo Heuser

Followup to newsgroup only please.