How to Use SUMIFS in Excel

SUMIFS is the Excel function for adding values that meet multiple conditions at the same time. Use it when one filter is not enough — for example, "sum all March revenue for the West region" or "total expenses over $500 in the Marketing category."

The syntax

• sum_range — the cells to add up
• criteria_range1 — the first range to test
• criteria1 — the first condition
• Add more criteria_range / criteria pairs as needed

Basic example

You have a table where column A is Region, column B is Month, and column C is Revenue. To sum revenue for the West region in March:

This adds only the rows where Region is West and Month is March.

Sum with a numeric threshold

Say column A is Category, column B is Amount, and you want the total for Travel expenses above $500:

This returns the total of Travel rows where the amount is greater than 500.

Sum between dates

SUMIFS is one of the safest ways to total values inside a date window. If column A contains dates and column B contains invoice totals:

That totals only the rows dated in March 2026.

Sum text that contains a word

SUMIFS supports wildcards, which is useful when text is not an exact match. If column A contains customer names and column B contains revenue:

This sums rows where the customer name contains Corp anywhere in the text.

Common mistakes

SUMIFS vs SUMIF

If you only need one condition, SUMIF is slightly simpler:

The moment you need more than one condition, switch to SUMIFS:

That pattern is especially common in finance sheets where totals depend on category, month, owner, or status all at once.

The Griddy way

SUMIFS is powerful, but it gets messy when you need the right ranges, date logic, and multiple filters all in one formula. Just describe the total you need:

"Sum all marketing expenses from March where the vendor contains 'Meta' and the amount is over $250"

Griddy writes the correct SUMIFS formula for your sheet structure and puts it in the right place.