SUMIFS+less than problem

[classified]

Hi everyone,
I have a data table called "Order" in which a column of its raw data are strings of date; ie. 20191015 (YYYYMMDD).
So I added 3 columns to the table to extracts its Y/M/D using LEFT/RIGHT formulas ie. LEFT(RIGHT([@Date String],4),2) is Column [M].
Then I tried to sum the amount of finished goods weight at the end of each month with some criteria of the products using the following formula:

=SUMIFS(Order[FG Weight],....,Order[Y],YEAR($B5),Order[M],MONTH($B5),Order[D],"<=31")

where B5 is Excel-format date value

The result turns out to be 0 for all months and when I tried removing the date part (Order[D],"<=31"), it worked fine.
So I suspected the problem rooted from the fact that my date source is formula-based.

Does anyone know a solution to this?

 

[AlphaFrog]

When you use LEFT\RIGHT functions, they extract text strings. Even though the results "look" like numeric values, they are actually strings. So you cannot use a <=31 comparison with a string.

The simple solution is to convert the string results of your LEFT \RIGHT formulas to numeric values by multiplying them by 1. Then Excel will coerce the strings into numeric values e.g.;

LEFT(RIGHT([@Date String],4),2)*1

The YEAR and MONTH comparisons probably worked because they were a simple text-to-text equals comparison and not a greater than or less than comparison if that makes sense.

 

[classified]

It works!
Thank you so much