Add up a column of cells in Excel

There are a variety of ways to add up a range of cells in Excel, whether that be a column, row or selection of unconnected cells.

Option One - simple addition

Let's say you have several cells, such as A2, A3 and A4. You can type the following formula into, say, A5:

=A2+A3+A4

Note that you could also type the following; Excel doesn't mind:

=a2+a3+a4

Of course, this becomes difficult to manage once the number of cells to be added up grows larger.

Option Two - use the SUM() formula

The SUM() formula is a more efficient way of adding up cells, although it isn't always used very well. For example, you could use it in the following way:

=SUM(A2, A3, A4)

This works, but isn't very efficient, especially when the range of cells gets larger. In this case you'd be better off typing the following formula:

=SUM(A2:A4)

This formula adds up all the cells from A2 to A4 inclusive. That way, if you were adding up a larger range of cells, such as from A2 to A200, you could type:

=SUM(A2:A200)

Extending the SUM() formula

If you have multiple ranges to add up, you can still use the SUM() formula. For example, let's say you have cells in the ranges A2:A4 and D2:D4. You could use the following formula to do this:

=SUM(A2:A4, D2:D4)

Option 3 - Autosum - a shortcut

With Autosum, Excel will automatically add up a range of cells and place the result in a nearby cell. For example, imagine you have a range of cells from A2 to A4. To use Autosum, select the cells you want to add up, then click the Autosum button. Excel will put automatically put the SUM() formula in cell A5:

=SUM(A2:A4)

If you wanted Excel to put the resullt in A6 instead, you would select the cells from A2 to A6 then click the Autosum button. Note that the formula in this case would be:

=SUM(A2:A5)

In other words, it will include the blank cell, A5, in the formula. This can be very useful, although that will be covered in another lesson.

Finally for this lesson, imagine you had a range of cells from A2 to H4. You want to calculate the sum of each column from A to H. To do this, select the cells you want to add up, then click the Autosum button. Excel will put the sum of each column in the row below the range (i.e. row 5 in this case). As before, if you were to select from A2 to H6, Excel would place the sum of each column into row 6 rather than row 5.