Adding color creates a great visual effect, but did you know that you can evaluate values by color? Use this technique to turn color into valuable information.

Counting records or values in Microsoft Excel is easy. Counting individual cells by their fill color definitely isn't. Using an old function and a matrix tames the problem.

The sum of the column of zeros will be displayed in the cell. Alternatively, you can type in the Sum function -- "=sum ()" -- and the range to be summed if you are familiar with the Excel Sum ...

You can sum a series of numbers in Microsoft Excel manually by typing in a simple formula, or automatically with a tool.