Likely the cells are text instead of numbers. SUM will ignore text, but
+ will coerce text to numbers if possible. =COUNT(range) will return
zero if there are no numeric values in the range. Copy an empty cell,
select the range in question, Edit|Paste Special|Add to force conversion
to numbers.

Jerry

trying hard wrote:

When i press autosum at the bottom of a range of cells the formula appears in
the cell but does not auto suggest cells to calculate. then even when i
highlight the cells and press enter excell returns a zero value.
However, if i enter the individual cells in the formula i.e. "=A1+A2+A3", it
will give me the correct total.
does anyone have any ideas whats going wrong.
ps. when i tried autosum in a seperate column it worked perfectly,