How to Sum Absolute Values in Excel (With Example)


You can use the following basic formula to calculate the sum of a range of absolute values in Excel:

=SUM(ABS(A2:A15))

This particular formula calculates the sum of absolute values in the range A2:A15.

The following example shows how to use this formula in practice.

Example: How to Sum Absolute Values in Excel

Suppose we have the following list of values in Excel:

We can type the following formula into cell C1 to calculate the sum of the absolute values in the range A2:A15:

=SUM(ABS(A2:A15))

The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:

sum absolute values in Excel

From the output we can see that the sum of the absolute values in the range A2:A15 is 64.

We can confirm this is correct by manually calculating the sum of each absolute value in the range:

Sum of Absolute Values = 4 + 3 + 10 + 1 + 9 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 6 + 7 + 2 + 4 + 4 + 5 = 64.

This matches the value calculated by our formula.

How the Formula Works

The ABS() function in Excel calculates the absolute value of a given number.

  • For example, the absolute value of -3 is 3.

The SUM() function in Excel calculates the sum of a range of numbers.

By using the formula SUM(ABS(A2:A15)) we first convert each value in the range A2:A15 to a positive number, then we calculate the sum of all of the positive numbers.

Additional Resources

The following tutorials explain how to perform other common operations in Excel:

How to Sum Filtered Rows in Excel
How to Select Every Nth Row in Excel
How to Count Rows with Value in Excel

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