AutoSum and the status bar: quick totals in Grid

Plenty of spreadsheet questions don't need a formula you'll keep. You just want to know what a column adds up to, or how many entries there are, right now. Grid by Zaweba answers those in two ways: AutoSum, which writes the formula for you, and the status bar, which shows totals without writing anything at all.

AutoSum

Click in the empty cell below a column of numbers and press AutoSum, or use Alt+= on the keyboard. Grid writes a SUM formula covering the numbers above. The same idea works at the end of a row.

AutoSum isn't only for sums. Its menu offers Average, Count, Max and Min as well, so the average mark in a class, the number of orders this week, or the highest and lowest temperature in a log are each a click away. Under a long list, a little block of all five gives a quick picture of the data.

Always glance at the range AutoSum suggests. It looks for the nearest block of numbers, so a blank row in the middle of a list, or a year typed as a number in the heading, can make it stop short or reach too far. If the range is wrong, edit the formula so it covers the right cells.

If the list will be filtered or have rows hidden, consider swapping the SUM for SUBTOTAL, which can ignore hidden rows, so the total follows what's on show.

The status bar

Select any cells and look at the status bar along the bottom of the window. It shows the Average, Count and Sum of the selection. Nothing is written into the sheet, so it's ideal for checking: does this column of receipts add up to what the bank says, how many of these rows have been ticked, what's the average of just these three months?

Because it updates as you change the selection, you can widen or narrow the selection and watch the figures change.

The status bar shows more than sums. It shows the current mode, so you can tell what Grid is expecting from you at any moment. It also shows a warning when the workbook has a circular reference, a formula that depends on itself, so you can find and fix it before the figures go astray. And it has a zoom slider for making the sheet bigger or smaller on screen without changing how it prints.

Which to use when

Use the status bar for questions you'll ask once. Use AutoSum when the answer belongs in the sheet, such as a total at the foot of a budget or an average under a set of marks. And when the sheet grows into something more structured, a table's total row does the same job for every column at once and grows with the data.

A quick checking habit

Before sending a workbook to anyone, select the key columns and compare the status bar's sum with the totals in the sheet. If they disagree, the total's range is wrong or some cells hold text instead of numbers, which the status bar's count will also hint at. It's a ten-second check that catches a surprising number of mistakes.

AutoSum and the status bar are the simplest tools in Grid by Zaweba, and probably the ones you'll use most.