Hi,

I never mentioned using average, the suggestion I gave was to do it
long-hand i.e sum the elements and divide by the number of elements. You can
do it by extending this example. Each sum and each count can be up to 30
elements and (I think) you can have up to 30 elements

=(SUM(B3,B5,B7,B9,B11,B13,B15)+SUM(C3,C5,C7,C9,C11 ,C13,C15))/SUM(COUNT(B3,B5,B7,B9,B11,B13,B15),COUNT(C3,C5,C7, C9,C11,C13,C15))

"pjr" wrote:

I have four columns of information, classified in up to eight different
categories. The categories are not listed one after the other, so the Average
formula needs to pull multiple cells from each of the four columns without
them being in a range. I've been using the formula (just an example):
=AVERAGE(a1,a4,a5:a8,b1...) but I have more than 30 inputs.

After reading your response I attempted the formula:
=AVERAGE(AVERAGE(a1,a4,a5:a8,b1),AVERAGE(c1,c4,c5: c8,d1))

But this gave me what I think is an incorrect answer. Did I understand your
response correctly?

"Mike H" wrote:

Hi,

There are several solutions but due to the lack of data this may not be the
best but it may help:-

=SUM(SUM(Ref1,Ref2,up to 30),SUM(Ref31,Ref32,up to another
30))/SUM(COUNT(Ref1,Ref2,...),COUNT(Ref31,Ref32,...))

You can have up to 30 cell references in each sum and count

Mike

"pjr" wrote:

Is it possible to have more than thirty arguments in a single average
function? The arguments are not contiguous, so i can't just make them into
data points...

What should I do?