Set Equals * in one criterion in Excel AVERAGEIFS

Question

Here is a generic version of the formula we are working with:

=AVERAGEIFS ( [Average Range] , Active_User, = TRUE, START_YEAR, [Cell A1] )

In Cell A1, we want to allow the user to select a specific year (2016,15,14) as well as select ANY Year (*).

Is there a string can we put into Cell A1 that will function as a wildcard?

We've tried * ; "" ; "20*" - also tried changing the fixed reference to something like "="&[A1] or ">="&[A1]. All return Div#0

Realize that this can be done by dropping the START_YEAR criterion from the formula, but we would like to avoid using VBA to modify the formulas. This is in a table with multiple similar AVERAGEIFS so there would be many items to modify.

Answer 1

Have you tried something like ">1900"? This would look for any date after 1900, which should cover all eventualities... assuming you're not analyzing 19th century events.