Conditional counting

[mikemathis]

I have a column of invoices which start with the year:

200602040005

where -
2006 is year
02 is month
05 is day
0005 is a sequential number

What I want to do is to take this list, which contains multiple years and count the number of instances where the year is 2006

I've tried to do it with CountIF and LEFT, but that's not working for me.

Any help out there?
many thanks.
Mike

 

[Aladin Akyurek]

=SUMPRODUCT((LEFT(A2:A400,4)+0=C2)+0)

where A2:A400 houses invoices and C2 the criterion year of 2006.

 

[mikemathis]

Aladin,

Thanks for the formula... It's not working for me though. I checked and my invoices are formatted as numbers as is the cell for 2006.

I get a #VALUE! response.

 

[Aladin Akyurek]

Aladin,

Thanks for the formula... It's not working for me though. I checked and my invoices are formatted as numbers as is the cell for 2006.

I get a #VALUE! response.

=IF(N(C2),SUMPRODUCT((LEFT(A2:A400&"0000",4)+0=C2)+0),"")

 

[Brian from Maui]

I think the #VALUE error comes from empty cells in the range. You could simply use,

=SUMPRODUCT(--(LEFT(A1:A400,4)="2006"))

 

[mikemathis]

I saw my problem... the range was bigger than the data - so I had some null values.

Is there a way to account for nulls? I'd like to pick a 'huge' range and then 'grow' into the formula.

Many thanks for walking me through this. I'm going to have to look up this SUMPRODUCT formula.

 

[mikemathis]

Brian,

That works for an embedded year value (thanks!) but when I reference a cell with the year in it, it doesn't.

 

[mikemathis]

Aladin,

Thanks. That does it exactly. I'm definitely going to have to get on top of SUMPRODUCT. Works for referenced cell! woohoo!

 

[Brian from Maui]

Brian,

That works for an embedded year value (thanks!) but when I reference a cell with the year in it, it doesn't.

Because the LEFT function returns text, entering 2006 in a cell and using that cell as a reference will not work, as the cell that houses 2006 is numeric.