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You can use the following basic syntax to exclude a cell from a range when using a formula in Google Sheets:
=SUM(FILTER(B2:B11,B2:B11<>B5))
This particular formula will calculate the sum of the values in the range B2:B11 and exclude cell B5 from the calculation.
The <> symbol in Google Sheets stands for “not equal.” In this formula we first filter the range to include all cells not equal to B5, then we calculate the sum of the remaining cells.
To perform a different calculation, simply replace SUM with another function such as AVERAGE or COUNT.
The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.
Example: Exclude Cell from Range in Google Sheets
Suppose we have the following dataset that contains information about various basketball players:
We can use the following formula to calculate the sum of values in the Points column, excluding the value for the player named Derrick:
=SUM(FILTER(B2:B11,B2:B11<>B5))
The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:
From the output we can see that the sum of the values in the Points column excluding Derrick is 218.
We can confirm this is correct by manually calculating the sum of each value in the Points column excluding Derrick:
Sum of Points (Excluding Derrick) = 22 + 28 + 14 + 37 + 35 + 28 + 22 + 14 + 18 = 218.
To exclude multiple cells from a range, simply use multiple <> symbols in the formula.
=SUM(FILTER(B2:B11,B2:B11<>B5,B2:B11<>B7))
The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:
The sum of the values in the Points column excluding both Derrick and Frank is 183.
We can also replace SUM with a different function.
For example, we can use the following formula to calculate the average of the values in the Points column excluding both Derrick and Frank:
=AVERAGE(FILTER(B2:B11,B2:B11<>B5,B2:B11<>B7))
The following screenshot shows how to use this formula in practice:
The average of the values in the Points column excluding both Derrick and Frank is 22.875.
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common operations in Google Sheets: