How to do SUM in MS Excel?

In mathematics or any calculation, addition is the basic function or calculation, to do the addition in MS excel there are two methods for this task and these are very easy as well.

So let’s start doing SUM in MS Excel.

Open your MS excel file, put some data into it. For you, I have collected some data in the file as shown in below picture.

In first column (A) I have ‘S.No’, in second column (B) there is list of ‘Item’, in third (C); ‘Qty’, fourth (D): Cost/Item and in Fifth (E) there is ‘Total Cost’.

To find total cost, I have multiplied Column C and D, as ‘=C2*D2’.

Now, we have to add all these Total Costs.

To do it, first type ‘=’ in Cell ‘E13’ and type ‘=E2+E3+E4+E5+E6+E7+E8+E9+E10+E11+E12’ and hit the ‘Enter’ key.

By doing this, we are adding all cells individually, but this method is useful when data is not in consecutive cells and small in quantity.

It means if we had to add data in cells E2, E5, E9, E12 then this method would very useful.

Since the data is in sequence and in consecutive manner then we do not need to use this method.

In MS we have a function called as SUM.

So to use this function, type ‘=SUM’ and it will look like the below picture.

Press ‘Tab’ key, SUM will be selected now it will ask for numbers, like number 1, [number 2].. and so on.

Now you can select the numbers individually as we did in previous example and you can also select a range, just click on the start cell and drag it to the desired cell.

I have selected start cell E2 and dragged to E12 then pressed the “Enter” Key, and we have the result; ‘=SUM(E2:E12)’ = 19300.

So, this was another method, but we have another method or a shortcut for this task.

That is ‘AutoSum’, this can be found in ‘Home’ tab under ‘Editing’ tools, as Home>Editing>AutoSum.

Select cell E13 and click on ‘AutoSum’ and it will automatically select all cells right above it, E2 to E12.

Keyboard Shortkey to this task is ‘ALT + =’.

So, this all was to add numbers in MS Excel.