thanks very much Dave for the formula and the links...

"Dave Peterson" wrote:

Put this in C1 and drag down

=IF(COUNTIF($A$1:A1,A1)<COUNTIF($A$1:$A$99,A1),"",
SUMPRODUCT(--($A$1:$A$99=A1),--($B$1:$B$990),($B$1:$B$99)))

Adjust the ranges to match--but you can't use whole columns (except in xl2007).

=sumproduct() likes to work with numbers. The -- stuff changes trues and falses
to 1's and 0's.

Bob Phillips explains =sumproduct() in much more detail he
http://www.xldynamic.com/source/xld.SUMPRODUCT.html

And J.E. McGimpsey has some notes at:
http://mcgimpsey.com/excel/formulae/doubleneg.html

===
This will return 0 for the Oranges, though.

SteveC wrote:

Col A Col B Col C
apples -1
apples 3
apples 1 4
oranges -1
oranges -5
bananas 1 1

What formula in C will sum only positive numbers for each group of lables,
as indicated above, leaving other cells blank?

haven't figured out how to adjust sumproduct yet... thanks...

--

Dave Peterson