Why won't my spreadsheet SUM??? Help

[SnoDrift12]

Having used lotues1-2-3 for 8 years to prepare income tax repoerts, I am now
using Excel for the first time. I copied my Lotus Workbook, to an Excel
workbook. It has 12 identical sheets (1/month) which I "sum" 8 columns and
then "sum' the same cell from each sheet onto a summary sheet.

The problem is 4 of my columns "sum" accurately on row 100, while the other
4 ony display zero(0). I have tried copying from the cells with correct sums,
checked the format, but for the life of me cannot figure out why these
columns won't add up!

=sum(b18:b99) ... should read 4500 .... displays zero. please help, my taxes
are already late!!! Thanks

 

[Francis]

check if these are text
place this in another and copy down to B99
=TEXT(B18)
it will reurn TRUE if they are text
format as number in another column
=Value(B18), copy down
select the range and copy >> paste special >> Value onto B18 : B99
--
Hope this is helpful

Pls click the Yes button below if this post provide answer you have asked

Thank You

cheers, francis

Am not a greek but an ordinary user trying to assist another

 

[Sheeloo]

You can convert to number by another method as detailed below;
Enter 1 in any cell
Copy the cell
Select the column you want to convert
Right-click, choose PASTE Special->Multiply->OK

 

[Sean Timmons]

Alternate fix is to type 1 into a blank cell, copy the 1, highlight your
value, paste special/multiply. Forces the cells to number format...