Sumproduct's superpower

We think Sumproduct is a bit like Bruce Wayne/ Batman. During the day Bruce has a regular job (businessman, playboy, philanthropist) and no-one suspects what he gets up to at night.

Sumproduct has a day job too: taking two sets of numbers, multiplying one by the other and adding up the result.

Of course Bruce Wayne has a secret. At night he squeezes himself into his tights and goes out fighting crime.

Sumproduct’s secret is that you can build conditionality into it. It’s definitely a secret because you don’t get any guidance about that from Excel’s usually comprehensive “F1” help. It’s something advanced practitioners have probably learnt by looking at what’s going on in other modelling work. They just ‘know’ about it. The ability to build conditionality into Sumproduct means it can go head to head with Vlookup or Index as a data picking solution. But Sumproduct does even more…

You can read more here: Excel's Sumproduct formula and its awesome superpower.