Forum Discussion
sum
It IS easy, as you say, "to do 1-12" --- so easy, in fact, that there probably are at least three or four ways to to it. (There frequently are, in Excel, multiple ways to go from point A to point B...). So if you've done it one way, why don't you share with us how you've done that.
Better yet, can you put a copy of the spreadsheet you have on OneDrive or in GoogleDrive, giving all of us a link, so we can give you answer(s) that are suited to the way you've got your data organized.
And be prepared for the possibility that some of us might well recommend organizing in a different manner.
- thank you for responding but unfortunately my data is confidential. I have 864 columns of data and want to summarize it by year. I can do it manually 12 columns at a time. But that is tedious! Just wondering how I can copy formula for 1-12 to jump to 13 to 24 and so on so I dont have to do go through annually to do this. Thanks
It would help tremendously if you would be willing to describe how you've laid out the data. You've said it's in columns, and it would appear that you have one column per month. What's not at all clear is whether this is just numbers in each column, how many rows, whether the number of rows is consistent across all those columns, or whether there's some pattern (e.g., one row per day, so 30, 31, 28, occasionally 29)? Or different numbers representing different categories of something or other.
So that's one question: how are the data laid out in columns and rows?
Then there's the word "summarize." What exactly do you mean in this instance? Adding up all the numbers? That would be one kind of summary. Or, does each row represent a different budget category, so you'd be summarizing by category? Is some "income," some "expense"?
You see the problem, I trust. You have left a LOT to the imagination, to conjecture, and yet want a specific answer. Help us help you. If the data are confidential, come up with an example, in the form of a comparable set of data, for two or three years, so we can at least see how it's arranged, and then take that word "summarize" and tell us what form of summary you're seeking.
