problem with characters { and } in a formula

[bds34]

I am not an Excel person. I'm using a spreadsheet that an Excel person made, and now I'm trying to modify one of the formulas in the spreadsheet to perform the same action, but calling its info from different places.

Here is the text of the formula that shows up in the box when I click on the cell:

{=SUM(IF(Stats!$F$3:Stats!$F$161=$E15,(IF(Stats!$BQ$3:$BQ$161="W",1,0)),0))}

What this is doing is going to a worksheet in this same workbook called "Stats" and looking for a certain value in two places. If it finds that value in both places, it adds 1 to a running total. I'm trying to modify this to do it someplace else.

When I click on the formula to edit it, the { and } disappear. If I try to reinsert them, it ceases to be a formula and instead shows up as text in the cell. Without them, the formula doesn't work.

I don't even know what { and } are called so I can't do a search to figure out what's going on.

Any help that anyone could offer would be greatly appreciated.

[NBVC]

Those are special brackets that are used only for Array formulas...

you don't physically enter them, they are entered by Excel when you confirm the formula by holding the CTRL and SHIFT keys and pressing ENTER....

Here's more on Array Formulas: http://www.cpearson.com/excel/ArrayFormulas.aspx