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I'd like to sum all the values in a column starting from a certain minimum value, but I don't want to give an upper bound because any value in the table will be appropriate for summing (minus the header of course) and I'd like to do it the "right" way instead of summing A2:A65535.

Is this possible?

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up vote 7 down vote accepted

Just leave off the row numbers:

=SUM(A:A)

Note that this expression cannot be placed in column A (that would cause an endless recursive summation which Excel won't allow).

If you instead wanted to sum all of the rows in column A above the current row (say 51) you could do this:

=SUM(A$1:A50)

If you ever move the cell that holds that expression it would change the A50 to whatever is above the current cell while keeping the starting point of the summation (A1) the same.

The same thing can be done if the total is kept above the summed cells in the current row (say row 1):

=SUM(A2:A$51)
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So you have to do either an entire column, or both a non-inclusive lower bound with an explicit upper bound? In my case, I'd like to do a mix of the two =SUM(A$1:A) but it doesn't seem to work. In any case, summing the entire column ignores the header and sums my column, so I'll mark this as an answer. Thanks! – bwerks May 18 '10 at 13:37
When summing, text should be ignored so as long as your sum is stored in a different column =SUM(A:A) should work fine. – Trey Hunner May 18 '10 at 16:05
+! thanks for the tips on using dollar sign – Felipe Alvarez May 26 '11 at 0:12
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