Ah, the wonders of modern technology. Went to see the doctor, she prescribed me some fantastic medication, now I’m on my way to full recovery. In celebration, I have written two new articles, see below:

• Since I haven’t published a Humor article in a while, I thought that it would be a good idea. The result is a personally embarrassing story, see it here: Tales of the Metro: Watch the Feet!.
• See Basic Excel Functions - SUM, for a quick how-to on using one of the most commonly used Microsoft Excel functions, SUM.

This is the first article I will be writing on some basic Microsoft Excel functions that are commonly used. This article will highlight how to use the SUM function.

The SUM function is pretty basic: It will add up whichever numbers and/or range of numbers that you specify, and output that result to a cell where the formula is contained. This is probably the most commonly used formula in Excel, so it is a good idea to know how to use it.

There are a couple of ways that you can insert this function into a cell. I have listed them below:

1. Type the function directly into the cell.
2. Use the Insert Function shortcut, which opens up the Function Wizard.
   
3. Use the Function Wizard via Insert -> Function….
   

For this article, I will be explaining the first method, that of typing the formula directly into the cell. I think that this is easier than using the Function Wizard for the SUM function. You should play around with the wizard to see if that is the case for you.

To begin, when entering a formula into a cell, you need to preface the formula with the “=” sign. Otherwise, Excel will interpret the formula as text instead of a formula.

For the SUM formula, the basic structure looks like this:

=SUM(number1, number2,…)

In this case, you could enter actual numbers for “number1, number2″ or cell references. Here are some examples:

• =SUM(1,2) - This would add “1″ and “2″ and come up with a total of “3″. It should also be noted that if you put quotes around a number in the formula (like it was text), the number will still be interpreted as a number.
• =SUM(A1,A2) - This would add the value in cell A1 to the value in cell A2 to come up with the total.

Alternatively, you can sum a range of cells. For example:

• =SUM(A1:A3) - This would add the values in cells A1 through A3 to come up with the total.

Lastly, you can combine these two methods. This is shown below:

• =SUM(A1:A3,A2,1) - This would add the values of cells A1 through A3 to the value in cell A2, as well as add the number “1″ in order to get the total.

This is a simple overview of how to use the SUM function, mainly because it is a very easy function to use. I would say that I use this function in about 90% of the spreadsheets I create, so I think it’s well worth it to take the time to learn how to use implement it with ease.