Many thanks to Becareful & Equine Investor for their responses to my query.

With the info available at http://www.mrexcel.com/articles.shtml (a link Equine Investor put me on to) I have discovered that Excel can most certainly do what I required & so much more!
If anyone else needs any Excel tips or help I strongly suggest you go to this site, it will save you from hours of frustration. In particular for formula help use the link above & click the heading Formulas in Excel, There are reams of problem solving & the site also has a forum to ask questions if you can't find what you need.
For WORD Help See TheWordExpert.com
For ACCESS Help See http://www.technoweenies.ca

The answer to my own enquiry from original posting above is for SUMIF question
=SUM(($C$3:$C$530=2*($B$3:$B$530=4) )*($D$3:$D$530=3)*($E$3:$E$530))
& for COUNTIF question
=SUM(($F$3:$F$500=6)*($N$3:$N$500=12)*($E$3:$E$500 =3)*1)
And you have to hold down the Ctrl and the Shift keys, and then hit Enter. (see quote below)

The $ symbols lock in the numerical values if you drag & drop. If you want to drag & auto fill remove all of the $ symbols.
Hope this helps someone else
Regards
DeeJay

The following is a quote from the Mr Excel web page about entering the above formula.

"Here is the secret: After you type a CSE formula, you have to hold down the Ctrl and the Shift keys, and then hit Enter.
You cannot just exit the cell with a click of an arrow key. Even if you get the formula right and hit the enter key, Excel gives you the totally non-user friendly "VALUE!" error. It doesn't say, "Wow – that is beautiful. You are 99.1% of the way there," which you probably were.
After you successfully enter one of these and look at it in the formula bar, you should have curly braces around the formula. You never enter the curly braces yourself. Hitting Ctrl+Shift+Enter puts them there."