I found the solution in another post (should have searched harder).

In the criteria area, instead of: F, it should be ="=F"

Thanks to Debra Dalgleish for the solution.


"Dan in NY" wrote:

I'm acutally using multiple criteria (hense the DSUM), of which one of them
is where a particular field is "F". Excel seems to match loosely with
anything that starts with "F" since when I use "FWD" as the criteria, it
correctly pulls only rows with "FWD" in that field.

Any other thoughts?

"Springbok" wrote:

Hi Dan,

By your description I think you need to use a SUMIF.

=SUMIF(range,criteria,sum_range)

Cheers,
Jon

"Dan in NY" wrote:

Hi, I'm using Excel 2002 and I'm using the DSUM formula to sum various rows
where the criteria is "F". However, there are also rows where the values are
"FWD". So, in the resulting DSUM formula, it sums both "F" and "FWD" rows.
Is there a way to make the criteria explicit to just "F"? Thanks in advance