"Vasant Nanavati" <vasantn AT aol DOT com wrote...
Biff, I agree that it's woefully inadequate for expert users. But ti's
still not a bad reference for the average user. As to your example, Excel
is coercing the text to a date, but it's probably not the preferred way to
present the argument. You could make the same complaint about VBA, where a
0 is coerced to a FALSE and vice versa, depending on the context.
....

Note my use of the adjective COMPLETE. Note also the OP's follow-up asking
where to find documentation of [criteria] expression syntax for SUMIF [and
COUNTIF]. Take a look at the PATHETIC entries for SUMIF and COUNTIF in the
document to which you provided a url. Any mention of the difference between
criteria "" and "="? Aside from the few examples, any mention of comparison
operators? Any mention of whether comparison operators could be used with
wildcards? Any mention of criteria being specific to text or numbers?

No to all of those questions.

I mean documentation for expert users or those who'd like to try to become
expert users. To me that includes people asking in newsgroups where to find
more documentation for Excel functions. Microsoft doesn't provide such
documentation.