ladyinchainmail,

The bottom line is - don't use formulas, use a pivot table. Select all your data, the choose Data
/ Pivot table... and click OK.

Then drag the description button to the row field, and the amount to the data field. Excel will
automatically create a summary table with totals based on your purchase debit descriptions.

HTH,
Bernie
MS Excel MVP


"ladyinchainmail" wrote in message
...
I set up an electronic checkbook on Excel and I categorized my
purchases/debits. I want to sort out all the different purchases/debits and
total each of them on another worksheet. I have no clue what formula
functions to use or even how to go about this. Can someone please help me
figure out how to set up the formula?