Excel 2007 summation by category

I am tracking my budget in Excel because I don't like any of the financial software I have seen... they seem to overcomplicate things. Plus, it is fun to play with.

However, as a beginner, I have an issue... In trying to summarize my "checkbook" sheet, where among other things I have a column of debits, and a colun with a category.

I would like to create a short table that would have the category in one column followed by the amount against that category, year to date (my register only contains transactions year to date.

Something like: sum (column1) only when column2 = xxx

Any ideas? Any good sites that have tips other than beginner stuff? I already KNOW how to create a chart...

Solution found and modified from another forum.

In column A I have a Category name, in the "Checking sheet, Column E is the category, and D is the dollar amount spent

Formula in column B: =SUMPRODUCT(SUMIF(Checking!E:E,A2,Checking!D:d))

The last D in my formula is actually upper case but colon D = to the forum.