Trying to average/sum data the hard way.

[mortalic]

Summary:
I'm building a spreadsheet for tracking finances (mainly to see what I can do).

Column B Contains drop down menus of fields I want to track, and some I don't. For the moment I'm trying to keep it simple, so everything I want to track starts with "Utility"
But I'll want to do more later.

Here's the problem. I can't seem to figure out how to search Column B (B6:b150 specifically), locate the text, then go to column E (same row) and collect it's $ value. My goal is to have a sheet that looks across all 12 months (each month is a different sheet) that has Utility - Water sum/average/max/min etc...
Utility - Power sum/average/max/min etc...

It seems so easy in my head but I'm not used to working in spreadsheets, any calc guru's out there think they can help me out? I can attach a screenshot if anyone thinks it might help.

[carl]

you could use a different approach altogether.
col a = date
col b =name of cost
col C= amount
Col d =MONTH(A1) and dragdown
col e =YEAR(A1)and dragdown

then use the datapilot with NAME in the lefthand box
YEAR and MONTH in the overhead box
and AMOUNT (which is SUM of AMOUNT by default) in the centre box
you should get a table with all your types of cost , summed by month and year.
Use the FILTER above the table to eliminate what you dont want.
_________________
carl
Using OpenOffice.org 2 on XP sp2

[mortalic]

That might work, I didn't think about that but I could seperate the year out pretty easily since it's just an annual spreadsheet anyway... I'll look into that tonight when I get home and report back.