Counting the sum from a large number of columns

[Przemek_Sawicki]

Hi,
I have a quick and maybe naive question. I have 60 columns (from p1 to p60) containing numbers. I have to count the sum from all of them. When writing the formula, do I have to include names of all columns, or is there any other (faster) way? Thank you.

[Paul_Danyliuk]

You have to include the names. Best you can do is semi-automate the formula creation by copying the table as plain text, extracting column names, then composing the formula out of those. Like here:

Instantly make a button to copy a row with lots of columns

Not a hack per se, just a smart way to speed up formula creation to copy a row (e.g. from the main table to a log table), using some regex. Here’s a video how you can make such log table in 2 minutes: Copy the table to a text editor or right into an offline / online editor that supports regular expressions (I prefer regex101.com, not affiliated). Remove everything but the headers Set up replacement with regular expressions: Search: ([^\t]+)\t? (means capture each element between tabs) …

However, this feels very much like maybe it’s not the 60 columns that you need? Maybe you should reorganize your data so that those 60 number inputs are separate rows instead? (unless, of course, it’s a hard requirement for those to be 60 columns — e.g. so that the table can be copied into Sheets)

[Przemek_Sawicki]

Unfortunately, there must be columns. I will try to apply the regex formula as you suggest. Thank you.

[Paul_Danyliuk]

In your case I think it would be even easier — just replace all tabs with ] + [ in any editor, and add [] around the formula (so that all column names are in square brackets before you paste it into Coda)