How does autosum work

With the mouse, select the range of cells you want to add up. Never type in the cell or cell range by hand. Excel looks around the blank cell and if it finds data it will display the data range in the formula. If the data range is correct, press Enter to confirm the formula. Click the AutoSum icon. The total is added automatically. To find the total sales using Autosum: Click on cell B8 with your mouse. Press Enter.

Cell B8 will now have the sum of B2:B5. How to Autosum Cells in Multiple Columns in Excel In this example, we have the fruit sales for the months in the first quarter broken down for each month. To Autosum the cells in each column at once: Select cells B7:D7. Excel will automatically generate the formulas for columns B to D and enter the results. How to Autosum Cells in a Row In this example, you have the fruit sales for the first quarter of the year in a horizontal format.

Click Enter. Cells F2:F4 will have the sums for each month. How to Autosum Rows and Columns at the same time In the previous example, to add up the rows and columns at the same time: Select cells B2:F8. Click on B2 and drag it all the way to F8 with your mouse. Click the Autosum button from the advanced group in Home. This will put the column totals in the last row of the selection, and the row totals in the last column of the selection. It will also put a grand total in the bottom-right corner of the selection.

COUNT — to count cells with numbers. MAX — to get the largest value. MIN — to get the smallest value. For example, to find the average sales from the fruit sales: Select cell B8.

Select the Average function. This will automatically add B2:B7 in the Average formula. Autosum-Workflow Basics Autosum follows a simple predefined algorithm to decide which cells to include in the selection. The second rule to know is that Autosum stops when it hits an empty cell or a cell that doesn't contain a number.

Here are two examples demonstrating this:. This lesson showed you how to use the Autosum function in Excel. It is a quick way to add up data in your spreadsheet if you don't want to type in formulas. You learnt how it could be used to add up both rows and columns of data automatically at the click of a button.

You also learnt about some of the scenarios where Autosum will not work, or will not work as expected. If you have any questions or comments on this lesson, please leave them below. We welcome your comments and questions about this lesson. We don't welcome spam. Our readers get a lot of value out of the comments and answers on our lessons and spam hurts that experience. Our spam filter is pretty good at stopping bots from posting spam, and our admins are quick to delete spam that does get through.

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How to use Autosum in Excel. How to Speed up Using Autosum in Excel. Related blogs Calculations on a Filtered List — learn how to use the SUM function when your data has been filtered in a table in Excel in Darren's blog Calculating Age — what if you want to calculate how many years it's been since a date passed?

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