If you are working with a series of numbers in a Word document and you need to sum up the numbers, you don’t have to pull out your calculator or open up an Excel sheet, or even put the numbers inside a table to find out the sum of the values. Word 2010 has a hidden command, that lets you do the math at the click of a button. The only trouble is that you need to first find the command and add it to the Ribbon or the Quick Access Toolbar, before you go about doing the calculation. In this Word 2010 tutorial, I’ll show you how to sum up numbers in a Word document.
How to Sum Up Numbers in a Word Document
The command to use for summing up values in Word is called the Calculate command. In this procedure, I’ll show you how to add this command to the Quick Access toolbar. You can also choose to add it to the Ribbon. To learn more about how to add commands to the Ribbon, check out the tutorial Add a New Group to an Existing Ribbon Tab in Word 2010.
1. From the Quick Access Toolbar drop-down list, select More Commands.
2. In the Word Options dialog box, from the Choose commands from drop-down list, select All Commands.
3. In the All Commands list box, select calculate and click Add.
4. Click OK to the Word Options dialog box.
Now go to the sheet in your Word document that contains the values you need to sum up, select the range of values, and click Calculate in the Quick access toolbar.
To select a range of values, press Alt while dragging the mouse over the values. The resultant will be displayed briefly over the Status bar at the bottom of the Word window.
You can also invoke the Clipboard task pane to retrieve, copy or paste the values you summed.
Now, you can do instant summing up in your Word document.