Copy and Paste info needed

K

Ken Frost

I have a summary sheet which adds and subtracts from a block of data
above the formula cells.

I want to copy and paste different blocks of data into the sheet and have
it do its calculations for each block.

I highlight the block to be copied into the 'summary sheet' and then copy
it - sometimes my block has more rows than other blocks (usually between
50 and 100 rows).

When I come to paste the new block into the summary sheet I either have
the problem of rows being left form the previous block (if my new block
has less rows) or my formula cells get overwritten if my new block has
more rows than the previous block.

I am used to being able to highlight text in word and then whatever I
paste into a document gets inserted over the highlighted text only ! I
suppose I am after doing the same thing in Excel.

Any possible help would be much appreciated.

Thanks
 
J

Jerry W. Lewis

Word does not have a row-column address space. To do what you want with
the selection area, Excel would have to guess at what you want to happen
with the remainder of the rows and columns impacted by the selection, as
well as with formulas that may reference both cells in the selection and
in the row/column extensions of the selection. Designing software to
guess at ambiguous intent usually causes more problems than it solves.

Depending on what you are doing, you might be able to reserve the entire
columns for your changing data, and write formulas such as
=SUM(A:A)
that would adapt to however much data you happen to paste in. you would
still have to delete excess data when pasting in fewer rows.

Jerry
 
K

Ken Frost

Jerry - thanks for the info - not what I wanted to hear of course.

In word if you highlight text before pasting only the highlighted text in
the target will be replaced - I suppose this is what I was hoping for.

I am not quite sure about the SUM(A:A) bit - what does the A represent.
My blocks are 9 columns wide and varying numbers of records and are
currently summed like;

SUM(A1:A50) - SUM(B1:B50) type of thing.

Any further light shed would be well received.

Thanks
 
J

Jerry W. Lewis

SUM(A:A) sums all of column A, equivalent to SUM(A1:A65536)

= SUM(A:A) - SUM(B:B)

would give the difference of the entire column sums.

Jerry
 
K

Ken Frost

SUM(A:A) sums all of column A, equivalent to SUM(A1:A65536)

= SUM(A:A) - SUM(B:B)

would give the difference of the entire column sums.

Jerry
Click to expand...
Thanks again Jerry.
 
Top