Use an entire column as a cell range

In some situations, you may want to find the sum or average of a column of data. Although you can do this with a normal cell range, for example =SUM(C1:C20) , you may have to update the cell range later if you add more data to your spreadsheet.

However, Excel also has a different kind of cell range that omits the row number and pulls in all of the cells in the entire column. For example, if you want to find the sum of all of the values in column C, you would type =SUM(C:C) . This kind of cell range allows you to add as much data as you want to your spreadsheet without having to update your cell ranges.

Watch the video below to see this shortcut in action.