How do I find the sum of specific cells within a range?

Question

I have two columns: Category and Score. Eg

Category | Score

Math    | 3
Science | 2
Math    | 4
History | 3
Art     | 1
Science | 1
History | 5
Science | 3
Art     | 2

I would like to have a cell that searches for all of the scores for History and sum that up. What would be the appropriate loop, if, and sum functions in Excel for that? Thanks!

Answer 1

You are looking for the SUMIF function.

Try this: =SUMIF(A:A,"History",B:B)

That will search all of column A for "History" and sum all of column B if "History" is found.

Make sure there are no trailing spaces after "History" (such as "History ") else you will want to clean that up or use a wildcard like so =SUMIF(A:A,"History*",B:B)