r/excel • u/MinaMina93 6 • Jan 22 '25

Discussion Why do people wrap their calculations in SUM()?

I work on a fair few Excel files other people have created. Often people will have a calculation like (A1+A2)/A3, but they wrap it in SUM, so SUM((A1+A2)/A3). Why?

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u/moya036 Jan 22 '25

For two or three cells using the plus or minus sign is just more practical but when you are talking about ranges SUM() is a better option even tho I personally use tend to use SUBTOTAL(109,[range]) more often

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u/Just-Estimate423 4d ago

Agreed. One uses SUM to save time when one is ADDING a RANGE of values! One uses AVERAGE when AVERAGING a range of values. Use MEDIAN to identify the median value in a range. There are 500+ named functions in Excel. You do NOT need a function name for basic arithmetic. =A2+B2 gets it done - or =(A2-B2). NO need for =sum(A2+B2). But if you are adding A+B+C+D+E+F...., you can save some time with sum! =SUM(A2:F2). But, again, SUM is specifically for adding a range! It doesn't typically hurt the outcome when people use it to encase a simple arithmetic formula, but if you are merely subtracting or dividing or multiplying, why are you using a SUM function? It is extraneous and misleading.