Excel for Mac 2011 - autosum function not working

Question

Level 1

13 points

Excel for Mac 2011 - autosum function not working

Hi - I am running OSX Yosemite 10.10.5 and have Office for Mac 2011. In Excel, the autosum function seem to have stopped working - any ideas?

I've done all the usual including:

- making sure that the cells are formulated as 'numbers'

- not copying from an external source (so I know they are numbers, not 'text)

- tried using a table within excel

- make sure that the excel preferences>calculation ... is set to automatically

- made sure that the region is UK (as this affects how data is sometimes displayed)

- everything else I've found via searching the internet, including 'cleaning' my data, copying it into word and clearing any formatting then pasting it back again.

I'm stumped - anyone else had this problem? Below are 4 images to show what happens:

If I manually type in the formula, I just get 0's:

If I try the autosum function after selecting the range of cells, it just inserts =sum() in the first highlighted cell (see below)

If I select a cell at the end and click autosum, same problem:

And if I try and do it as a table, same again:

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Aug 29, 2015 11:32 AM

Reply

Answer 1

ShonalL04 Author

Level 1

13 points

Aug 29, 2015 1:47 PM in response to deggie

Hi deggie

Thanks Deggie - I had switched my Microsoft Auto Updates off (because I had problem ages ago with the 'syncservices' app) so it was set to 'manual' and as it wasn't in my dock, I had completely forgotten! Have downloaded and installed latest update and the problem has been sorted. Thanks and 'duh' from me!

Reply

Answer 2

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

Aug 29, 2015 1:10 PM in response to ShonalL04

I may be wrong, but it looks likely that the numbers are being treated as text given they are aligned left instead of right. If the cursor is in a cell and you click the AutoSum control it should insert the function =Sum(<Range>) where range consists of the cell immediately above the cell clicked on as long as it holds a numeric value, and then in turn each cell above that until a non-numeric is encountered. If there are no qualifying cells above it will try to the left, otherwise you get =SUM(). Note that your sum uses a comma as a decimal separator whereas all of your entered numbers use a period. At a guess your regional settings are at odds with your number formatting preference.

tt2

Reply

Answer 3

turingtest2

Level 10

278,263 points

Aug 31, 2015 11:38 AM in response to ShonalL04

Happy to see that updating has fixed things for you. 🙂

I still think the original cause was a clash of regional formatting rules as evidenced by the sum totals being given as 0,00 instead of 0.00 in the screenshots.

tt2

Reply

Answer 4

deggie

Level 10

167,525 points

Aug 29, 2015 12:59 PM in response to ShonalL04

http://www.microsoft.com/mac/support

Reply

Answer 5

ShonalL04 Author

Level 1

13 points

Aug 29, 2015 1:48 PM in response to turingtest2

Thanks for response - although I had tried them with different alignments, however it seems it was just a case of having the latest version installed, which I didn't! All sorted now thanks.

Reply