Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I am working on the "Is There Such a thing as Too Much Gaming?" project, and I was wondering if there was an easier way to add up certain columns in Microsoft Excel 2010. In this project, there is a survey file for Excel that lists the answers of 62 questions about how much video games affect their lives for 3,245 video gamers. For each question, the gamers gave points (1-5) for how much video games affected them in that aspect of life. I am supposed to add six of the question's points up for each person and tally them, but I have to do this for 3,245 people, and it is taking an extremely long time. Is there an easier way to do this? Or do I have to add them up one by one which has already taken awhile and I'm barely to 100.
Thank you for your help!

Hi melissLT-IN,

Welcome to the forum.

I am glad that you asked, and I hope you haven't spent too much time adding the numbers manually.
Yes, there are easier ways. The spreadsheet program is designed to be convenient to manipulate numbers.

Here is one way to do it:
1.For the first gamer (in row 2), click on cell BL2 and type in the formula "=SUM(P2:U2)" (without the quotes).
This means that you assign the value of cell BL2 to equal the sum of the values in the cells ranging from P2 to U2, which are the 6 values you wanted to add for the first gamer.

2.Copy this formula to all the gamers.
Specifically:
Click on cell BL2;
Press Ctrl-C (to copy the formula in BL2 into the "copy-and-paste buffer");
Select the cell range BL3 to BL3247. That is, click on BL3; hold your mouse's left key and move your mouse down the column (BL) till you reach the cell BL3247.
Press Ctrl-V (to past in the formula from the "copy-and-past buffer").

Then, you have all the 6 values added up for all the gamers.

You might want to watch some Excel tutorials to get familiar with Excel. There are quite many tutorials available on youtube. For example, here's one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7dHA_8GzKw

JChang

Thank you so much for your help! It helped me too figure my data out better, and it helped me go much much faster. I really appreciate it!