Formula summing up even if the reference cell is empty

Hi Folks

I have this formula which looks at a cell, then looks for every instance of the name in that cell on another sheet and sums the figures in another column wherever that name occurs. However, if the reference cell is blank, for some reason it then sums everything in the column that contains figures. I don't understand why???

=SUMIF('Data_Sheet-YTD'!$C:$C,"*"&'Analysis-YTD'!$K24&"*",'Data_Sheet-YTD'!$J:$J)

Data_Sheet-YTD C:C contains all the names the name in Analysis-YTD K24 is looking for and Data_Sheet-YTD J:J contains the figures to be summed.

I've tried using and IFERROR addition, no joy...

Any thoughts please??

Kind regards and many thanks..

DezB

Hi Carim

Thank you for your quick reply, you really do come to my aid. The reason for the "*" is that The name in K24 is contained within a string the column C:C

For example K24 contains the word Eastbourne and in C:C there could be multiple entries that contain that word, such as

"1234 Eastbourne abcd" and

"1234 Eastbourne CDEF" etc etc

Currently it looks for that word Eastbourne then sums up whatever is in J:J

I really hope I'm making sense here???

Kind regards

DezB

Hi Rory

Sorry for taking so long to reply to you. I really should have known that.. Thank you, much appreciated..