How can I use a Google Spreadsheet query to sum rows in another sheet

I have a Google Spreadsheet that spans 3 (work)Sheets. On the first page I have a set of rows with customer data.

That looks like

C D E Joe - 100 Bob - 200 Joe - 300 Jane - 50 

And on sheet 2 I have a column with a formula that attempts to query those values and sum the purchase values for each customer (col E).

The formula I tried to use which fails is:

"=(QUERY('data'!B40:E60, "Select C, Sum(E) where C contains """&A18&""" Pivot C")) 

In all seriousness though I really don't care about selecting C this is just the 20th variation I tried. What I am trying to do is sum E for all rows where C matches the cell A18 which is the customer name on sheet 2.

2 Answers

Try:

=QUERY('data'!B40:E60, "Select C, Sum(E) where C = '"&A18&"' group by C") 

and see if that works ?

Column A: Name , Column B: Amount

=QUERY(A1:B,"select A,sum(B) group by (A)")