Ranges from A1 to A10

Part of the Fundamentals section of Coddy's Excel journey — lesson 20 of 42.

Imagine ten numbers in cells A1 through A10. Writing =A1+A2+A3+A4+A5+A6+A7+A8+A9+A10 works... but nobody wants to type that. Excel has a shorthand for "all the cells from here to there": a range.

A1:A10

The colon means through: A1:A10 is every cell from A1 down to A10, ten cells in one short phrase. Ranges run across rows too: A1:E1 is the first five cells of row 1.

Ranges can even be rectangles. B2:D4 means "the block whose top-left corner is B2 and whose bottom-right corner is D4", columns B through D, rows 2 through 4, nine cells in all. Top-left corner, colon, bottom-right corner: that's the whole grammar.

A range isn't a formula by itself, it's a way of naming a group of cells. Its real job starts next chapter, when you feed ranges to functions like SUM and AVERAGE: =SUM(A1:A10) adds all ten cells in one stroke. Learn to read ranges now, and functions will feel easy.

Try it yourself

This lesson doesn't include a code challenge.