Hi E.I.

Try this: select any name and sort up or down

In you approach, the achor point for the SUM-range are moved with the name.
A basic rule: never select before a sort. If you have to, there is something
wrong with your list.

Frans

"excel idiot" wrote in message
...
I have a spreadsheet with about 20 columns and 8,000 rows. I have
numerical
data in most of the columns corresponding to people. Like this:

John 9 6
Debbie 9 5
James 8 5

Total 26 16

If I highlight all columns and do a sort by the person's name, the total
number at the bottom changes even if the data has not changed. Do you
know
why this is happening?

Thanks in advance for any help!