Expert: Richard Rost - 7/9/2009

Question
Hi, wondering if you can answer the following for me. I have an Excel 2007 sheet into which I export information from my Customer Services helpdesk. The columns in this, therefore, contain various bits of information, one of which is a column for Reason (the reason for the Customer Services case)(Column O). I have another column, which counts the number of days a case has been open for (column AT), and another column that has the department that the customer services issue relates to (for example "Sales")(which is column K).

I need a formula so that I can find the average number of days open (data from column AT), but only for rows that relate to a specific department (data from column K) and only for which the Reason is NOT "credits" (data from column O).

I tried doing an averageif NOT function, but i can't get it to work.

Does your magical mind have any ideas?

Answer
Well, you could make another column that's based on those criteria and will either contain the VALUE or BLANK if the criteria are met. For example:

=IF(AND(K1="Department Name",O1<>"credits",AT,"")

So now this new column will have either the value from AT (number of days) or will be blank "" if the criteria is/is not met.

Now just average up the values in that column, and that should do what you want.

Let me know if you have any other questions or comments.

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Cordially,

Richard Rost
599CD Computer Training
http://www.599cd.com

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