If you’re just getting started with Excel, check out our intro guides for making a spreadsheet and formatting a spreadsheet.
If you’re looking for subtraction information, check out our guide to subtracting in Excel.
For example, if you’re adding values in the A column and you have data in cells A2 through A10, you would type in the following: =SUM(A2:A10) If your dataset has a header row, don’t include the header in the SUM formula.
To quickly sum other columns of the same length, you can press Ctrl+c (Windows) to copy the cell with the SUM formula, then press Ctrl+v (Windows) to paste it under the other columns. On Mac, these shortcuts are ⌘ Cmd+c and ⌘ Cmd+v respectively. Pasting the formula will automatically change the cell references to the column that corresponds with where you pasted the formula.
For example, if you have three columns and the longest one has values from row 1 through row 20, your formula will need to include rows 1 through 20 for each column you want to add even if this includes blank cells.
In other words, type the first column letter, the first row number, a colon, the last column letter, and the last row number. For example, if you’re adding columns A, B, and C, and your longest column stretches to row 20, you would enter the following: =SUM(A1:C20)
