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How to sum diagonal of a range in Excel?

Author Xiaoyang Last modified

When you do some arithmetic calculations, you may need to sum numbers diagonally in a table. In fact, you can also sum diagonal numbers in Excel which doesn’t require you to sum the numbers one by one. If you want to know more about this question, please read the following article.

Sum diagonal cells of a range in Excel

Sum diagonal cells of a range in Excel

Supposing I have the following data range, and now I want to get the result of the summation of the diagonal cells.

a screenshot of source data

1. Sum cells diagonal down and to the right

If you want to sum the cells diagonal from top left corner to lower right corner（A1+B2+C3+D4）, the following formulas can help you.

Please enter this formula =SUM(A1:D4*(ROW(A1:D4)=COLUMN(A1:D4))) into a blank cell, see screenshot:

a screenshot of summing cells diagonal down and to the right with formula

And then press Ctrl + Shift + Enter keys together, and you will get the result as you want.

a screenshot showing the result

2. Sum cells diagonal up and to the right

To sum the diagonal cells from lower left corner to top right corner (A4+B3+C2+D1), you should apply the following formula: =SUM(A1:D4*(ROWS(A1:D4)+1-ROW(A1:D4)=COLUMN(A1:D4))), and press Ctrl + Shift + Enter keys to get the correct result. See screenshots:

a screenshot of summing cells diagonal up and to the right with formula
a screenshot of arrow
a screenshot showing the result 2

Notes:

1. The arguments A1: D4 is the data range that you want to sum the diagonal cells.

2. These formulas only are applied to the range cells which have the same column number and row number, such as 5 column and 5 row.

Related article:

How to sum all digits in a number in Excel?

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