Running Totals Problem

[F J]

Hi, I’m having a problem with running totals. I have several
spreadsheets with thousands of rows that are broken into groups. I
have to create running totals for each group in the spreadsheet. The
data is set up as follows, and the running totals formula should be in
column C.

Column A Column B Column C
Apples 1 1
Apples 5 6
Apples 3 9

Oranges 6 6
Oranges 1 7

Pears 2 2
Pears 3 5
Pears 5 10

Plums 8 8

Peaches 3 3
Peaches 2 5

The only way I know of to do this would be to use something like:

=SUM($B$2:B2)

and copy it down for each group. The problem is that because of the
absolute reference, I have to manually change it for the first cell in
each group before I can copy it down to the other cells in that same
group. This would be all right for a few rows, but there are
thousands.

Is there any kind of formula that would do this that I could just type
once and copy all the way down the column? I’ve tried using various
formulas using the INDIRECT, OFFSET, and ADDRESS functions, but so far
I haven’t had any success. Maybe I'm not even on the right track with
this.

Does anyone know of a way to do this? Thank you in advance for any
information.

 

[F J]

Hi, I just wanted to clarify about my data above since it looked like
it was aligned before I sent it but after posting it seems to have
gone askew. Anyway, Column A is the name of the item, Column B is the
data I want to use for the running totals, and Column C is where I
want the formulas for the running totals to go. Sorry for any
confusion.

 

[F J]

Hi, Claus, thank you so much! I just tried your formula and it works
great! Thanks again!