Quick Question:

I am looking for a way to search through a excel file and find the total amount of gallons that a certain location was using. The excel file would go as follows:

Location: Product: Usage

New York City Diesel 30

Billings Unleaded 42

New York City Diesel 55

Dallas Unleaded 14

(Assuming first column is A1:A5, second is B1:5, and third as C1:C5)

While researching I found my best alternative is using the Index and Match functions to accomplish what I need.

I need to search through this data and find any element that contains new York city and diesel. If them two arguments exist I need to add up the total amount of usage.

Im not looking for special functions rather just using Excel.

If anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

I don't know anything about Index and Match, but this should work...

Add three columns to the right of Usage (bLocation -- D and bProduct -- E, calculatedUsage -- F).

//D2
=IF(A2="New York City",1,0)
 
//E2
=IF(B2="Diesel", 1, 0)
 
//F2
=E2 * F2 * C2

Then auto-sum at the bottom of calculatedUsage.

---

EDIT: I might as well add a brief explanation as to why this works.

We only care about the usage if those 2 criteria are met, keeping the usage unchanged if they are. We want to nullify the usage if the criteria are not both met.

We create some simple if checks, and either keep the usage value (by multiplying it by 1), or nullify the usage (multiplying by 0).

This gives us a column with just the usage we care about (and 0 in all other cases), which we can just sum like normal.