SUMIFS produces a value of 0 when a second criterion is added

Hi,

I am trying to use the SUMIFS function to evaluate a sum based on two criteria. The formula I am using is:

=SUMIFS(Teaching!$V$6:$V$218,Teaching!$C$6:$C$218,C5-2500,Teaching!$D6:$D218,0)

which, as far as I can tell, is of the correct form. Column C contains numbers identifying a category, and column D is mostly blank except for a few rows which contain a short string. I want to sum all those figures in column V which belong to a certain category (calculated by C5-2500) but excluding those which have a string in column D - i.e. only those where the cell in column D is blank.

When I enter the formula with only the first criterion it evaluates correctly, but on adding the second it always evaluates to zero.

Can anyone spot what is going wrong with this?

Thanks!

Thanks everyone. I thought I'd already tried all those variations for blank cells before and it still hadn't worked, but now I've tried it again and it's much better. Perhaps I got myself confused with a formula elsewhere...

Sorry to reopen this but it turns out it's not quite solved after all: it is now giving the correct total when all the cells in column D are blank but is not ignoring those which are not blank. I've tried using "=" and "" but they both produce the wrong answer.

I'm afraid I can't upload the file since the contents is confidential. I could create a mock version but I'm not sure that would be any more use than what I can tell you.

I am confused with this line..
it is now giving the correct total when all the cells in column D are blank but is not ignoring those which are not blank

What I meant was that when all the cells in column D are blank the correct value is returned, but when there are cells which are not blank it appears to include them in the sum, although the formula is designed to ignore those values.

Thanks for your help. I didn't exactly manage to solve it, but I circumvented the problem by reworking it slightly differently.