Sum of two numbers with a minimum of zero

Question

I have a Google Spreadsheet with two columns of numbers (A & B). I want to add these numbers together and put the result into a third column (Results).

If the sum of these two numbers is less than zero, I would like the result column to have zero instead of a negative number.

I found this list of Google Spreadsheet function,but I did not see one that is applicable.

*----*----*--------*
| A  | B | Results | Calculation in result column:   =Sum(A1:B1) 
*----*----*--------*
| 1  | 3 |       4 | <= Normal and good, 
*----*----*--------*
| 1  |-3 |       0 | <= Good, this is what I am looking for 
*----*----*--------*
| 1  |-3 |      -2 | <= Bad, this is what is happening.  
*----*----*--------*

My question is:

• How do you find the sum of two columns that will result in a minimum value?

Answer 1

You can use the MAX function for this, since

MAX( A3+B3, 0 )

will return 0, when the sum is negative.

Answer 2

In openoffice, I used the following:

 if(sum(a1:b1)>0; c1; 0)

This formula is placed in c1. It says that if the sum of A1 through B1 is greater than 0 then use the answer that is in C1 otherwise use 0.

I'm just assuming that googles' spreadsheet has somehthing similiar. I hope this works for you.

Answer 3

This is the ARRAYFORMULA variant:

=ARRAYFORMULA(IF(A1:A3+B1:B3<=0;0;A1:A3+B1:B3))

I didn't get the MAX to work with the ARRAYFORMULA.