I was afraid of that. :) I was hoping to avoid creating an extra column, but
in the end, if it works, it works. Thanks for the input!

--David

"Max" wrote:

It's never easy to work directly with mixed data in downstream calculations

Imo, much simpler to strip out the embedded text and have it as pure nums in
an adjacent col, eg in B1, copied down:
=IF(A1="",0,SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A1,"Completely Inadequate",""),"Completely
Adequate","")+0)

Then you can easily point to col B for the necessary downstreams using
SUMIFs, etc in the usual manner w/o any issue.
--
Max
Singapore
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---
"David Aukerman" wrote:
Max,

Thanks for the quick reply. I like that solution. But now I have a deeper
question: can I do this same thing in a SUMIF? E.g.,

=SUMIF(A1:A100,"Criterion1",B1:B100)

has trouble if the B column contains any "1 Completely Inadequate" and "5
Completely Adequate" entries. Any ideas about this?