
Tips.Net > ExcelTips Home > Worksheet Functions > Database Functions > Indirect References to a DSUM Parameter
Summary: DSUM, like most other Excel worksheet functions, requires parameters that define how the function does its work. If you don’t provide those parameters in the manner Excel expects, then you can get errors or incorrect results. This tip explains how you can overcome one such error to indirectly reference the data you want summed. (This tip works with Microsoft Excel 97, Excel 2000, Excel 2002, and Excel 2003.)
Octavio has a worksheet that has a lot of named ranges in it. In one section of his worksheet he has a list of those names. In a formula that uses the DSUM function, Octavio wants to use different cells in this list to refer to the actual "database" that is used by the function. For instance, if "February06" is a named range and cell F12 contains the text "February06," Octavio wants to specify F12 as the first parameter in the DSUM function and have it get the actual range. When he tries the following, where Criteria is a named range for the summation criteria, he gets an error:
=DSUM(F12, "Profit", Criteria)
The solution to this is to use, instead of the actual cell, the results of the INDIRECT function. This function grabs whatever is at the cell it references, and then uses that content as a "pointer" to another cell or range. Thus, the following two formulas provide the exact same result:
=DSUM(INDIRECT(F12), "Profit", Criteria) =DSUM(February06, "Profit", Criteria)
Tip #2885 applies to Microsoft Excel versions: 97 2000 2002 2003
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