How to Add Up Many Columns in Google Sheets
Learn how to efficiently add up multiple columns in Google Sheets using simple functions and references, including how to avoid common errors.
You're trying to add up many columns in Google Sheets. One little trick I want to show you is if you highlight, let's say, column A and B, over on the bottom right, you're going to get a sum. You'll be able to also see the average, minimum, or maximum, or the count, but if you want that text inside of your sheet, we're going to equal sum, and we can reference more than a cell or even one column or one row by just doing A colon B. If you want. The A and B columns. And there we have our sum. But let's say you ran into a reference error . If you added another header row or row above your header , and you did the exact same thing, sum A colon B, you would get a reference error . This is a circular dependency saying, hey, basically it's trying to sum itself. One easy way to fix that is by putting the first row number here.
So a, then the number either two or three or four. And you can leave the B as just the letter B and it'll sum everything. You can see this is an automatic sum here. As we delete it, it gets smaller and smaller. You can also put this on another page. So if we'll cut that, add a new sheet, paste, paste, paste. In order to reference the other sheet, we can't just use A, 3, and B. We're going to have to put the name of the sheet, sheet 1, and then an exclamation point. And now we get the exact reference we're looking for. We're trying to sum up column A and B. Even as this changes, we'll see this changes as well. And there you go. That's how to sum up many columns.
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