Which function is used to create formulas for preselected cell ranges within a worksheet?

• A. Subtotal
• B. SUMIF
• C. COUNTIF
• D. AVERAGEIF

Answer: (B)

The main idea here is using a conditional aggregation that targets a specific range you’ve chosen. SUMIF is the function designed for that: you specify the range to check against a condition, the condition itself, and optionally a separate range of values to sum.

In practice, you point to the cells that contain the values to test (the preselected range) and define the criterion that those values must meet. If you have a separate range with amounts you want to add up, you supply it as the sum_range; otherwise the same tested range can be summed. This lets you dynamically summarize only the data that matches your condition within a specific area of the worksheet.

For example, if column B has regions and column C has sales amounts, you can sum only the sales from a particular region with a formula like SUMIF(B:B, "East", C:C). Here you’re testing B for the "East" region and summing the corresponding values in C.

Other functions like COUNTIF or AVERAGEIF also apply criteria to ranges, but the scenario described—summarizing values in a preselected range with a condition—matches SUMIF most directly because it returns a sum based on that condition within the chosen range. Subtotal is about aggregating visible data after filtering and isn’t driven by a separate criterion in the same way.