help with using autosum in excel 2008 on mac mountain lion

Question

help with using autosum in excel 2008 on mac mountain lion

I am coming from pc world... love my new mac....and excel autosum is not working on my new macbook pro. I click autosum at the bottom

of a column with 8 numbers highlighted as I did on pc. And the correct sum shows in the cell where I want the total. But

when I click enter, the sum does not add the numbers. It just shows the sum formula. HELP! Been searching online all day for the answer!

38
8
1
6
44
7
5
16
=SUM(C3:C10)

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5), uisng word 2008

Posted on Feb 14, 2014 9:16 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 14, 2014 12:06 PM in response to embracinglife

That appears to be the correct formula. That formula will compute the sum you need when you move to another cell (presuming those numbers are in cells C3 though C10.

What happens when you:

• cursor to another cell or

• press return to move to a different cell or

• click the checkmark √ to accept

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Answer 2

Feb 14, 2014 1:22 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks Grant. I just wanted to get a total for the column. Had 8 columns that all needed to be added together as individual columns to send to someone with totals. I moved to another cell and the sum remains but never totals. On my pc the excel totaled it as soon as I clicked "Enter." On my macbook, the sum sits there and does not add those cells together. I am baffled!!

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Answer 3

Feb 14, 2014 1:34 PM in response to embracinglife

forgot to say that the formula builder pops up when I click autosum and see that formula show up. No idea still how to get the total of all those numbers to show up as it used to on the word 2007 and 2010 on my pc. Just want excel to add a column for me.. Simple... but appears very complicated suddenly!!!

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Answer 4

Feb 14, 2014 3:28 PM in response to embracinglife

Perhaps you are making this too complicated.

What I did:

Entered the numbers in cells A1 through A8

clicked in cell A10.

clicked autosum in the tool bar.

Hit return. A10 displays 125.

To get totals for the other columns, select cell A10 and drag to the right to the last column.

Go to Edit in the menu bar and select Fill - Right.

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Answer 5

Feb 14, 2014 7:25 PM in response to embracinglife

Hi Eustace: I think maybe something is not set correctly in my preferences or settings and I have no idea what it could be. I did exactly as you suggested. That is how I set it up originally as I have used excel on my pc for a number of years. The numbers I enter are showing up on the left side of the cell in the column rather than on the right side as they used to on the pc. Could this be part of the problem?

When I enter a simple column of numbers on the worksheet and just want to do a simple adding of cells A3 thru A12 (A1 has a word to name the column and A2 is a space), I go to the tool bar, click autosum, hit return and I get a formula showing sum=A2:A12 instead of the number I was hoping for. I get a yellow triangle next to the sum that has a drop down box that says.... formula refers to empty cells? Still not sure what I need to change to get this simple addition to be simple as I would expect it to be. Wonder if I need to reinstall the program? 😟

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Answer 6

Feb 14, 2014 7:29 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Grant... How do I find a check mark to accept? I do not see that as an option anywhere? Still no idea how to get that sum to do what it normally should and just add those cells together and give me a numerical total of a simple few cells. I think my program is not operating the way it should and usually it is the operator and not the program. Would love to figure out what step I am missing!!!

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Answer 7

Feb 15, 2014 3:31 AM in response to embracinglife

The numbers I enter are showing up on the left side of the cell in the column rather than on the right side as they used to on the pc.

To set the alignment of text or numerals:

select the cells (could be one cell, a row, a column or a whole sheeti),

click Format in the menu bar and select cells,

click alignment on the top of the pane, then horizontal.

(You see that alignment is just one of the cell attributes you can set with this procedure)

I go to the tool bar, click autosum

You have to first select the cell where you want the autosum to be entered, then click autosum.

This way you can enter the sum of A3 thru A12 in cell P26 if that's what you want. The trick is to select P26 before autosum.

The autosum command will guess which set of cells to sum, usually the cells just above or to the left. But you can over ride that selection by selecting a different set of cells

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Answer 8

Feb 25, 2014 8:57 AM in response to Eustace Mendis

Thank you so much for taking the time Eustice to continue giving me more clarity. It was the alignment of the numerals that fixed the issue of not being able to get the autosum to work. I am very grateful.

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Answer 9

Feb 25, 2014 9:52 AM in response to embracinglife

the alignment of the numerals that fixed the issue

are you saying that numerals typed into left-aligned fields were simply not seen as "numeric" quantities, but were interperted as alphanumerics -- like part numbers instead of quantities?

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Answer 10

Feb 25, 2014 12:39 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

yes- that must have been what was going on. I had everything else in place but until I changed to right alignment, the column would not show up as a sum when I clicked on autosum. Now excel is totaling all my columns just fine!! Thanks for hanging in there with me on this, Grant and Eustice!!

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