Question

I have multiple columns that contain a sample information as listed below:

  A  |  B  |  C  |  D
------------------------
 23R | 12C |  4D | 35R
 12C | 76T | 14T | 19D
 32C | 56D | 14R | 68D
 ... | ... | ... | ...
 etc | etc | etc | etc

From the whole table (without creating another column), I would like to sum up all the values that contain the letter “R”. Given the example table above, the number should be: 72. I’ve tried a multitude of different approaches:

• Doing a straight sum will yield “0” (as expected)
• Tried splitting the letter from the number with a LEFT/RIGHT/LEN combination, but that required another column
• Using SUMIF will only work with numbered ranges (unless someone can show me to apply a function beforehand without an additional column)
• SUMPRODUCT did not help
• Looked into vlookup/hlookup. Didn’t yield any desired results

How can I achieve this without any additional columns? Cells can also be blank, and I would like to handle them as zeros if possible.

Answer 1

Use this array formula:

=SUM(IF(RIGHT(A2:D4,1)="R",VALUE(LEFT(A2:D4,LEN(A2:D4)-1)),0))

A2:D4 is your entire table. Enter the formula by pressing Ctrl+Shift+Enter.