So you want to sum a column in Google Sheets. You may be having some trouble with this. I'm going to show you some troubles, some how to do it, some cool things you may not know about Google Sheets, and where to find this data of how to sum a column. So, first off, very simple, equals SUM. We can put this in any cell, and we can select the column we want. So B colon B. That's how we have to select the column. If our formatting of the cell is wrong, we need to just go up to format number , let's say plain text . There, 265 is the answer here. And this number will update if we enter November's sales. It'll update automatically. However, you may be doing something like this. Maybe you're inserting a row above, or even putting the total down here equals sum b colon b. There, you're getting this reference error.

Circular dependency detected to resolve with iterative calculation . We can't do this because basically it's going to sum up everything in b. But it is included in B, so it will continue to sum itself. And it just becomes an error . If you want to put the sum at the bottom, you have to select very specifically B3 here to B14. There. And that will get rid of that error . But what I actually suggest you do is a couple of other things. One, you can put the total at the top, equals sum, and just start at B3, B3 colon B, and here we can just do colon B and it will continue adding up and summing up as you enter more and more data . But I think there's a better place for this. And that's on a completely different sheet.

So we created this total sales. It's, it's completely blank. Uh, and we're just going to put total sales here and we can do equals sum. And now we have to go back to 2023 sales and select our range . And if you notice, if we select it, it includes the name of this sheet. So that's pretty cool. We can actually type this ourselves if we know how to type it. I like to select it so I just really know that it is exactly the right data . But if we wanted to type this we need to put in quotes or single quotes 2023 sales put an exclamation point b colon b. And once you have the correct full reference , it'll change to a color. That's how you know. And if you highlight it, you'll see this number and this tool tip will show up.

So, you know, you're on the right path, anything before that. And it's just text. Why I'm putting quotes around 2023 sales is because there's a space in there. If you're referencing a sheet that doesn't have a space, let's say it's just 2023 sales with no space. We don't need those quotes. We can just do 2023 sales, B colon B. We can be very specific here, B2 to B14 if we want. But for my taste, I like to know that I'm summing up the entire column , no matter where that data is. And that's just me. And I hope this was super helpful to you. I want to share one more place you can find the sum. If you just want to select the B, column. Go over here on the bottom right and you see sum. If you do not see the sum, maybe click this and you see a few different numbers.

Average, minimum, maximum, the count. That's pretty cool. And how many numbers there are. So this is saying there's 10 numbers, but there's 11 cells that have text in them. So if we added another number here, 45, and select this, you can see that our numbers are different. Count is 12 and count numbers is 11. That's pretty cool. I think that's really fun to see that the sum, if you just want a quick summary of the sum, you want to see all of them added up very quickly, just select the column and here the sum is one because it's all adding up to a hundred percent, but you can see the average is maximum eight percent here. That's pretty cool. I think that's really awesome. A really cool little tip if you're using Google sheets to check down there in the bottom right. If you're trying to get more out of Google Sheets than you ever have before, consider subscribing here on Better Sheets on YouTube. Bye.