Are you just starting to learn Excel? Are all these boxes confusing you? Adding is the most primary and straightforward function of Excel. Here is a simple and easy guide to help you with different methods of finding the sum of cells in columns.
So, here we go!
How to add in a Column on Excel through writing simple addition formula?
Here we have a spreadsheet in which we have the number of sales of vacuum cleaners for the years of 2011 and 2012.
We want to see the total number of vacuum cleaners sold each year.
Click the total box at the bottom of 2011. A more tedious way of adding these number will be by writing the formula in the in Total’s cell.
=B1+B2+B3+B4+B+B6+B7+B8+B9+B10+B11+B12+B13
Then hit Enter. You will get your sum. It doesn’t matter if you type your for formulas in lowercase letters
is the same as typing this:
But that is a little lengthy to type. Especially if you have longer spreadsheets. For this reason, we will move on to our next method.
How to add in a Column on Excel by clicking on the cells?
If you don’t have the time or your data is too extensive, you can add by simply clicking on the cells instead of writing their numbers. Follow this method.
- Press and equals sign.
- Click the cell B2.
- Hit Plus sign (+) on your keyboard.
- Click the cell B3.
- Hit + and click each cell you want to edit
- So on and so forth
You will see that the cells you click have become highlighted. Hit enter, and you will find the sum of the values in your column.
Note that it doesn’t matter of some of the cells in your selected cells are empty or have alphabets in them. Excel is programmed to ignore those.
Similarly, after making the addition and getting your total, if you decide to change the value in any of the cells, the sum will in cooperate that, and it will vary according to the new amount that you have added.
Another big plus of using this method is that you can choose cells from different columns to add. Here is how you do it.
- Put = (That is the equals sign) to start the formula.
- Click on the first cell you want.
- Put the + (Plus sign)
- Click on the second cell you want to add
- So on and so forth.
For example, if you want to know the number of vacuum cleaners sold in April and May of both 2011 and 2012, you will press = and then click on B3, press +, click on B4, press +, click on C3, press +, Click on C4 and then hit Enter. You will get your sum.
However, this method tends to become lengthy and complicated if the spreadsheet is more substantial, and your data is extensive. For this reason, there is another method which we are going to talk about know.
How to Add Cells in Excel using a SUM Function?
This next method uses a function to do the addition on a range of cells for you. It’s called the SUM () Function. Type Sum and open parentheses “(“ Click and drag vertically downward to highlight all the cells in that range. Then close parentheses “).”
Other than that, you can also click and select the first and the last cell of the range that you want to add.
All these cells will become highlighted and then press Enter to achieve your total.
How to Add Cells in Excel using an Auto SUM Function?
If you don’t want to type sum formula, you can also get to this by clicking the auto sum feature. It is the Sigma sign that appears in the Home tab.
It is a very efficient way of adding a whole range. You can do that by simply clicking on the bottom of the column on the empty cell you want to collect your total in, and then click on this sigma sign.
And Voila! The Auto Sum function will add up all values in the cells of the entire range. You can use this to add up to as many as hundreds and thousands of cells.
You can see which cells are being highlighted to confirm whether it is the correct range for which you want to get the total.
So here are all the methods that there are to add across columns.
If you want to find out in detail about many more functions of Excel, click Here.
For attaining perfection at any data entry job, click Here.
What are you waiting for? Go ahead and Excel!
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