Autosum returns an incorrect zero value on the selected cells

[trying hard]

When i press autosum at the bottom of a range of cells the formula appears in
the cell but does not auto suggest cells to calculate. then even when i
highlight the cells and press enter excell returns a zero value.
However, if i enter the individual cells in the formula i.e. "=A1+A2+A3", it
will give me the correct total.
does anyone have any ideas whats going wrong.
ps. when i tried autosum in a seperate column it worked perfectly,

 

[Jerry W. Lewis]

Likely the cells are text instead of numbers. SUM will ignore text, but
+ will coerce text to numbers if possible. =COUNT(range) will return
zero if there are no numeric values in the range. Copy an empty cell,
select the range in question, Edit|Paste Special|Add to force conversion
to numbers.

Jerry

 

[trying hard]

Ok, I have just discovered that what i was actually working with was an
imported report from MS Access that my line manager saved as an Excell sheet.
Autosum seems to work when i re enter the figures manually in the cells, but
not if i copy and then paste them as values.

I would be very gratefull if anyone have any ideas, because its going to be
a long process to retype all the data ?

 

[trying hard]

sorry Jerry I didnt see your reply before i added to my original post. I did
what you said and now all is hunky dory. thanks for your help.
Regards
Wayne

 

[Jerry W. Lewis]

You're welcome, glad it helped

Jerry