OK. I solved my original problem of keying in on one word of a text string
using SUMIF (I used "*"&ref_cell&"*" as the criteria). The formula still
won't work across multiple sheets though, and that's a lot more important to
me. I tried it as a straight formula and as an array. Either way I get the
same error. The complete formula I'm fighting with is
=SUMIF('01.02.2006:11.27.2006'!C11:C24,
"*"&B3&"*",'01.02.2006:11.27.2006'!D11:D24). Is there another function I
should be using, or am I going to have to nest 24 SUMIF statements into a
SUM? Seems like there should be a neater way.

"s31064" wrote:

A new wrinkle: Using SUMIF I'm able to do the calculation on a single sheet. I
need to do the calculation across 24 sheets. When I choose a range across
multiple sheets, I get a #VALUE error "A value used in the formula is of the
wrong data type". Each individual sheet works fine. I only get the error
when I try to check two or more sheets.