Hi Steve

Glad you got it working.
No, there is nothing wrong with the behaviour of Excel or Sumproduct.
How values are stored internally by Excel is different to how they are
displayed or portrayed to the user through formatting.

For example, if you enter 17/11/2006 in a cell (UK date format) it will
be stored by Excel as the number of days since 31 12 1899 which is 39038
a numeric value. It will display as 17/11/2006 which looks like text, or
through formatting, you can change the appearance to 17 Nov 2006 or 17
November 2006 or November or a variety of different things. None of
these "cosmetic" changes will affect how the value is stored 39038.

Now if you enter '17 Nov 2006 it will display as 17 Nov 2006 and will be
stored as a string "17 Nov 2006". Excel will allow you to enter ' 31 Nov
2006 as it is just a string or '17 Roger's Month 2006 but trying to
enter these latter two as dates would be rejected as they are invalid.

If Excel did a comparison between a cell holding 17 Nov 2006 (true Excel
date) and '17 Nov 2006 it would quite rightly say that the match was
False, as it is comparing a numeric value 39038 with a string "17 Nov
2006"

Changing the format of a cell, does not necessarily alter any contents
already entered, but will treat any entries made after formatting in the
manner required.

If in a cell formatted General (the default setting), you enter a 1, it
will be treated as numeric and you will see the number in the cell right
justified. If you prefix the entry with a single quote '1 the quote will
not show in the cell, and the number will be a text 1 and will be left
justified and will be stored as the string "1".
If you format the cell as Text, then enter a 1 without any preceding
quote, then it will be treated as Text and stored as the string "1"
If your reference numbers were greater than 15 digits in length, then
they would have to entered as Text, as Excel only supports 15 digits for
numerical entry.

Now, in Sumproduct, you were asking it to do comparisons of each cell in
the range E4:E30 with the value in cell A3.
If A3 had 123456 as a number and E4 had "123456" as text, then they are
not the same and a False is returned
If E4:E30 were text values, then provided your entry in A3 was a text
value, all would have worked.

I didn't actually suggest that you converted those values to numeric, it
was the acreages in column B that "had" to be numeric, otherwise they
could not be summed.
I just suggested that you checked that both the values were text or
numeric although I perhaps had not made this clear enough. Provided they
are both of the same format, it does not matter what the format is, then
the comparison can be made as to whether they are equal to each other or
not.

The original entries may have been copied and pasted from another
source, which was text and that is why they will have been text. Or,
there may be some values which are greater than 15 digits, which would
therefore have required them all to be entered as Text.

If any were greater than 16 digits, they will now be incorrect.
1234567890123456789 would be changed to 1234567890123450000 when you
multiplied by 1.

Make sure you check this out. If they are greater than 15, you will need
to correct the column back to text and type the final digits again, and
change cell A3 to text, so when you enter the value you wish to be
compared it is a text format.

I hope this clarifies things.

--
Regards

Roger Govier


"SteveDB1" wrote in message
...
Roger,
Thanks for your reply.
Ok....
Map!E column is indeed showing up with a value when I sum the permit
values.
However, the "other" page permit values add up to zero. I then went
into
make sure that the formatting was correct. It shows as general. I then
checked the cell that I did the sum formula. It was formatted as text.
I
reset the formatting to number, with zero decimal places. It still
remained
at zero. I then did as you mentioned, and made each cell an equation.
i.e.,
=1*permit#. My sumproduct cells then changed to the appropriate
values. I
then removed the equation component, and just left the Permit #'s in
each
cell, and the values over in the sumproduct column remained. It
apepars to
have "forced" the solution, and then just left it alone once it was
changed
to only the permit numbers by removing the =1* portion.
At this point I spoke with the other engineer I made mention of, and
he said
that this was odd, and that the sumproduct should be able to just read
the
values in the cells being tested, and not look at formatting, or
anything
else. And quite frankly, I agree with him.
What does it take to make sufficient modifications to the general form
of
the equation within the background of excel to have it look only at
cell
contents, and not any other aspect or property of that cell?
This is an excellent routine, but its ruined by its looking at all the
properties of the cell, instead of just the contents. Is there
something that
can be done on MS' side to modify this, or ....?
Again, thank you.
and you too Don.

"Roger Govier" wrote:

Hi Steve

I can see nothing that is implicitly wrong with your formula. Your
reasoning at the end of your email is absolutely correct and that is
how
Sumproduct should arrive at your answer. The fault therefore, I
believe
must lie with the data.

Firstly, your Numeric values in column B are they Numeric or could
they
be text representations of the numbers.
Test the values by using a spare column and entering =SUM(B4:B30).
Does
it give the correct result or 0?
If it gives 0, then you could try entering a 1 in another cell, copy
it,
mark B4:B30 and Paste SpecialMultiply. That should coerce the values
from text to numeric.

Next test the Permit Numbers. Are they Numbers or Text in MAP!$E and
is
it a Text or numeric value in A3?
Finally, test the names in Map!F, against the value in C3. Try
looking
at a cell in MAP!F4:F30 that has the same value as you have in C3 and
calculate say =LEN(MAP!F4) and =LEN(C3). Are the results the same?
If
not there may be leading or trailing spaces in either the data or the
comparative cell.

Apart from the space character Char(32), if the data were copied from
another source, it might also contain the Non breaking space
character
Char(160).

In a spare column, enter =SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(E4,CHAR(160),""),"
","")
and copy down for the length of your data range. Then, copy this new
column, and Paste SpecialValues back over the original data in
E4:E30.

Also, if you are using XL2003, highlight your formula and go to
ToolsFormula AuditingEvaluate Formula and step through the formula
and
you will see in the white pane how Excel interprets each part of the
equation in building to an answer.

If none of these tests bring success, post back and maybe someone
else
will have further thoughts.


--
Regards

Roger Govier


"SteveDB1" wrote in message
...
Roger,
Here is a sample of actual formula, and data.
=sumproduct((Map!$F$4:$F$30=$C3 )*(Map!$E$4:$E$30=$A3)*(Map$B$3:$B$30))
Map! is the worksheet name
Column F = John Doe, Sam Jack, etc.... (all names of clients)
Column C = same names as Col. F. It however is on another sheet,
and
is
searching data on that sheet
Column E = 5 digit numeric values (we classify these as "general"
format.
These are permit #'s. I say general format because we just want
plain
numbers
with no decimal places.)
Column A = same permit #'s as in E. (Same as in C. The data being
searched
is on another worksheet.)
Column B is acreage values.
This is a Civil Engineering application, tracking ownership of
land,
and
water rights.
As mentioned initially it worked really well in the beginning.
After
a few
weeks it began to become finicky.
To give some more info, I've saved the general form of the equation
into an
*.xlt template in my template directory. I adjust the row range for
the
specific worksheet length.
And finally, I've even deleted columns, cleared formatting, etc...
to
wipe
out any possible corruption that may have defiled the file I work
with.
I can open a workbook that has never used the formula, and it may,
or
may
not work there. One of the engineers even did a test before he
started
using
it, and tried a variety of values. He was unable to get it to work.
I
just
applied it to my worksheet set, and found it to work immediately.
It
was only
later that it began not working sporadically. Now I'm working on
one
workbook
in which any of the values with a permit number return a 0.
I get that what I'm asking is for the routine to search the column
F
range
on the Map worksheet, and compare it to the data in cell C3 on the
other
worksheet. IF that data exists, it will return a true, or 1. It
then
looks
through all of the data in the Column E range on the Map worksheet,
and
compares it to the data in cell A3. If the data is there, it
returns a
true,
or 1. If the data is NOT there, it returns a false, or 0. OR, if
the
data is
in one of the cells, and not the other, it will then return false,
or
0. For
the values that are both true, it will return a true, or 1, and
then
add the
third column set to return a total value.
Thus giving me a dataset comparable to
true*true*4.5 = 4.5
true*false*2.3 = 0
false*false*2.1 = 0
false*true*1.2 = 0
true*true*6.5 = 6.5
total = 11.00
Let me know if you need more.


"Roger Govier" wrote:

Hi Steve
Post your actual formula, and a sample of what data appears in the
column you are testing against cell a, what data is being tested
against
cell b and what data exists in Final.

--
Regards

Roger Govier


"SteveDB1" wrote in message
...
Hi folks.
I use sumproduct to sum columns of values after testing against
2
criteria.
At first it was working great, and then it stopped working once
one
cell
that I was testing against had a value in it. It's actually
become
quite
finicky. It'd work in some cases, but not in others.
My version of sumproduct is:
=sumproduct((Col&RowRange = cell a)*(Col&RowRange = cell
b)*(Col&RowRangeFinal))
Where Col&RowRange would be a column, and range of rows; cell a,
and
cell b
would be the values that I'm looking for; and the
Col&RowRangeFinal
would be
the column that I'm summing up.

I have to ask-- would this be affected by cell formatting? (I've
gone
so far
as to copy and paste cell values from the source regions to the
final
regions, and it still only works sometimes.) If so, why? It'd be
really nice
to know, so I can ensure consistency, and continuity.
what else would cause this to fail?
Oh, and I did try the comma's instead of *'s as shown in the
office
assistant help file. That killed everything with no sign of
errors,
or
#ref,
value, etc....-- i.e., I just got 0.000 for the returned value.

Thus far, aside from this issue, it's been a real godsend, so
I'd
hate
to be
forced to use something else to solve my reasons for using it to
begin
with.