"criteria" in a sumif refering to the value in another cell

I'm trying to do a sumif with the "criteria" refering to an adjacent cell
rather than having the criteria hard keyed into the formula. For example, if
I have a list of purchases by date and I want to sum up those that occured
prior to 12/31/04, and 12/31/04 is the value in another cell. Can i have the
sumif refer to that cell for the "criteria"?

=SUMIF(rng,"<="&cell_ref,rng_to_sum)

eg

=SUMIF(A1:A100,"<="&C1,B1:B100)

--
Regards
Ken....................... Microsoft MVP - Excel
Sys Spec - Win XP Pro / XL 97/00/02/03

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"mark" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> I'm trying to do a sumif with the "criteria" refering to an adjacent cell
> rather than having the criteria hard keyed into the formula. For example,
if
> I have a list of purchases by date and I want to sum up those that occured
> prior to 12/31/04, and 12/31/04 is the value in another cell. Can i have
the
> sumif refer to that cell for the "criteria"?