When you are planning the layout of your spreadsheet, a helpful way to start is by creating headings in the first row that describe the data that will be going into those columns. This makes your data easy to identify, and can also help later if you need to sort or print your data.
But sometimes your initial plans for the spreadsheet might change and you need to add another column between some of your already-existing columns. Luckily Excel provides you with the means to add a column at any location in your spreadsheet so that you can include this new data in the desired location.
Adding a Column in Excel for Office 365
The steps in this article were performed in the desktop version of Microsoft Excel for Office 365. However, these steps will also work in most other recent versions of Excel as well.
Step 1: Open your file in Excel.
Step 2: Click the column letter to the right of where you wish to add the new column.
Step 3: Right-click on the selected column, then choose the Insert option.
The existing data should have shifted to the right, leaving you a blank new column.
Alternatively, with a column selected, you can add a column by clicking a column letter, then clicking the Home tab at the top of the window.
You can then click the Insert button in the Cells section of the ribbon, then select the Insert Sheet Columns option.
Since the phrase “add a column” is a little ambiguous, the section below will show you how to use a formula in Excel to add the values contained with the cells in a column.
How to Add the Values in a Column in Excel
If you aren’t interested in adding a new column to your spreadsheet, but would rather add the values contained within the cells of a column, then you are able to do that as well.
Step 1: Click in the cell where you wish to display the sum of your column values.
Step 2: Type the formula =SUM(XX:YY) but replace the XX with the cell location containing the first value to add, and replace YY with the cell location containing the last value to add.
Note that I want to add the values in column C in the image above, so my formula is =SUM(C2:C13).
Step 3: Press Enter on your keyboard to execute the formula and display the sum of the specified cells.
Would you like to be able to manipulate and sort your cell data in a number of different ways? Find out how to create a table in Excel and give yourself the ability to change the order of your data, hide certain values, and generally perform many of the functions that you might need when working with data in Excel.
Matthew Burleigh has been writing tech tutorials since 2008. His writing has appeared on dozens of different websites and been read over 50 million times.
After receiving his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Science he spent several years working in IT management for small businesses. However, he now works full time writing content online and creating websites.
His main writing topics include iPhones, Microsoft Office, Google Apps, Android, and Photoshop, but he has also written about many other tech topics as well.
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