really appreciate the help - overwhelming response. I picked Pete Uk's
solution at random and it worked great. It seems that one of the differences
between Pete's suggestion and my original attempt was hte inclusion of dashes
(-----), can anybody please tell me what do these represent in the sum
product function?

Best regards

Steve

"Stevo" wrote:

Hi,

I have a long list of records all on the same worksheet. In column d are
the categories I want to search on (e.g. apples). I am tryoing to found out
how many apples between 01/01/2008 and 31/01/2008. I have tried

=SUMPRODUCT((D1:D999)=1/1/2008)*((D1:D999)<=31/12/2008)*(G1:G999="apples")

This returns 0 even though there are apples in column g between these dates.

Can somebody please help?

Best regards

Steve