I think I need a LOOKUP, but have gone a bit rusty!

[cedricthecat]

This is my first post in ages!

Before I was made redundant about three years ago, I was totally immersed in Excel for most of the time at work, but since then, have become a rusty to say the least! I still maintain a few Workbooks for my own personal use, but nothing overly complicated, so the skills are waning.....

Anyway, would appreciate if someone could point me in the right direction on this!

Trying to sort a Workbook out for a friend. It's for expenses and has Worksheets for January 2012, February 2015 etc and one called "Average". The monthly ones have a descriptor in Column F, with a £ figure in Column D, starting on Row 2 through to Row 14, so F2:F14 are the descriptors, D2:D14 are the monetary figures. In Worksheet "Average", the descriptors are in E2:E14, with C2:C14 being totals for each item across each month

What I'm needing is something to go in C on "Average" to total these up. Currently we have

=SUM('January 2015'!D2+'February 2015'!D2+'March 2015'!D2+'April 2015'!D2+'May 2015'!D2+'June 2015'!D2)
etc

But we need something a little more sophisticated, as although the descriptors (things like "Energy Bill", "Council Tax" etc), are the same for each month, the don't always follow the same order, as they appear in each monthly Sheet in date order!

So, I was trying to work out a way on "Average" to LOOKUP the value of E2, find it's position in F2:F14 in each monthly sheet, return the corresponding value in D2:D14, and then SUM them.

Now, I'm guessing that this is probably not too complex, but sadly, trying to use a MATCH LOOKUP formula, I am just tying myself up in knots!

Any help would be very much appreciated! :D

 

[cedricthecat]

Just to say, both approaches worked a treat! I plumped for the SUMIF version

Thanks again!