I have a large column of dollar amounts and I’m trying to add them all up. I’ve been following the directions I find through google which tell me to click on the first blank cell below the last dollar amount, press sum, select all dollar amounts in column to add, then press accept, but when I do that it just says 0. Any ideas?
It may be that your dollar amounts are really text entries, which won’t SUM. Select View | Value Highlighting from the menu and your cell entries will be coloured; text cells are formatted in black, formulae in green, and number cells in blue.
If this is the case you’ll need to make some changes to your data - the changes will depend on what is actually in the cells in question.
Crap, they are black so that means they’re text. How in the world can I make it so I can total the values?
Select the column, then replace everything preceding the numbers by nothing. Then format as Currency.
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The recommendable procedure depends on
- What you want to achieve (exactly) beyond getting the SUM once.
- For what reason your “amounts” were text, and whether or not the situation will occur again.
- If there is an assured format concerning the textual amounts, and how this format is specified.
__(Always 2 decimal places? “$” in front or behind? Arbitrary sign? Comma or point? Sign represented in what way? e.g.) - If you want to retain the original data aside of things neccessery to calculate with them.
- Everything I did not yet think of.
To interpret anything looking somehow like an amount for a human as an actual numeric amount ready for calculations by software might require a kind of “arctificial intelligence” Calc is not capable of.