Are you staring at your Microsoft Excel spreadsheet wondering why the calculations are not adding up properly? A row or column may clearly add up in your head, but it’s just not accurate in your spreadsheet. Here are a few things to check if your Excel spreadsheet is calculating wrong.
Fix 1 – Ensure Workbook Calculation is Enabled.
- Go to “File” > “Options” > “Formulas“.
- In the “Calculation options” area, ensure “Automatic” is selected.
Fix 2 – Hidden Rows or Columns
If columns or rows are hidden, they still will calculate in the sheet. You will need to find and unhide these rows if they are causing your spreadsheet to calculate unexpected totals.
You can find hidden rows or columns by locating the small boxes between columns or rows on the left or top panes.
You can reveal hidden by highlighting the rows or columns the hidden values are in between, right-click, then choose “Unhide“.
Fix 3 – Hidden Decimals
If values that were entered with decimals were entered, Excel may round those values up in a single cell, but not for the overall total.
Check to see if decimals are hidden by highlighting all cells with numbers, then selecting “Format Cells“. From there, you can look under the “Number” category, to see how many decimal places are shown. Increase the Decimal places to 30 to see everything.
Diane Trelenberg says
I am trying to subtract 17.63, 17.46, 50.44, 16.95 from 2285.61
The answer should be 2182.3 but it is giving me 9039.96
???????
Jeff says
Thanks for the tip. I was trying to figure this out for 2 hours until you pointed out there were actually hidden columns.
hope says
Hi i’am having problems with getting the correct sums,
i have to add four 8 hours which would give me a total of 32 hours but it is giving me a togtal of 8, even by using auto sum . please help
Polly says
Brilliant – THANK YOU!
Val says
I understand if its some kind of big numbers or difficult calculations, but in my case, I’m trying to subtract 96,00-95,04 and it gives me 0,959999999999994
instead of 0,96. anyone can calculate it in their mind, 1,00 – 0,04 equals 0,96. right? But in excel it says 0,959999999999994
David says
I found this page looking for problems with MS Excel FV (future value) function failing to give results from their own examples. I put in all the numbers they tell me to put into the FV function and it gives a different FV than what their example said. That is true for all of their examples for FV. It is stunning that Excel doesn’t give me confidence in their results.
Teya L Watson says
Thank you. The last fix helped me. It was the decimals. Even though it was already at 2, increasing it and then decreasing it back down to 2 fixed it.