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    50 Useful Excel Functions: Excel Essentials, #3
    50 Useful Excel Functions: Excel Essentials, #3
    50 Useful Excel Functions: Excel Essentials, #3
    Ebook153 pages1 hour

    50 Useful Excel Functions: Excel Essentials, #3

    By M.L. Humphrey

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    About this ebook

    Microsoft Excel is an incredibly powerful tool.

     

    And even knowing just the basics of how to use it can help tremendously with your career and your finances.

     

    But mastering Excel functions can help you take that basic understanding to an entirely new level.

     

    In 50 Useful Excel Functions, M.L. Humphrey walks you through fifty of the most useful functions within Excel from IF to VLOOKUP to CONCATENATE to TRIM to SUMIFS, COUNTIFS, and AVERAGEIFS.

     

    By the time you finish this guide you will understand how formulas and functions work within Excel, have a solid grasp of how to use fifty of the top Excel functions, know how to find other functions you might need, and know how to troubleshoot a function that isn't working for you.

     

    So if you're ready to take your understanding of Excel to that next level, then this is the book for you.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherM.L. Humphrey
    Release dateMay 22, 2018
    ISBN9781386294412
    50 Useful Excel Functions: Excel Essentials, #3
    Author

    M.L. Humphrey

    Hi there Sci Fi fans, my name is Maurice Humphrey.I am a Vermont native, husband, father, grandfather, well over 60, Navy veteran, retired IBM engineer, retired printer repairman, Graduated: Goddard Jr. College, VT Technical College, and Trinity College. Over the years I’ve written technical articles, taught technical classes, and presented at technical conventions.I’ve been reading science fiction for over 50 years now. First books were “Journey to the Centre of the Earth” by Jules Verne and “The Stars Are Ours” by Andre Norton. I’ve read and collected many great stories, and a considerable amount of junk ones as well. I’d say by now that I probably have a good idea of what I consider a good story.

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      Book preview

      50 Useful Excel Functions - M.L. Humphrey

      How Formulas and Functions Work

      If you are writing a basic mathematical formula in Excel you do so by starting your entry in a cell with a plus (+), a minus (-) or an equals (=) sign. Unless you have a good reason for doing so, like years of ingrained habit, I recommend just using the equals sign.

      So if I want to add two values together in Excel, I would enter something like this into the cell:

      =2+3

      I could also do so using cell references if those values were already stored in cells in my worksheet:

      =A1+B1

      (If you aren’t familiar with cell notation in Excel, see Appendix A.)

      When I hit Enter or otherwise leave that cell, Excel will display the result of the formula in the cell. In the top example, that means it would display the value 5 in the cell. Excel will, however, retain the formula that was used to calculate that value. You can either double-click in the cell or click on the cell and look to the formula bar to see the formula.

      Formula Bar

      Excel formulas can use basic mathematical notation or they can use functions to perform specified tasks.

      To add two numbers together in Excel you use the plus (+) sign between the values like I did above. To subtract one number from another you use the minus (-) sign. To multiply two numbers you use the asterisk (*) sign. To divide two numbers you use the forward slash (/). So:

      =3-2 would subtract 2 from 3

      =3*2 would multiply 3 times 2

      =3/2 would divide 3 by 2

      As I mentioned above, your formulas can either use cell references or numbers. So:

      =A1-B1 would subtract the value in Cell B1 from the value in Cell A1

      =A1*B1 would multiply the value in Cell A1 by the value in Cell B1

      =A1/B1 would divide the value in Cell A1 by the value in Cell B1.

      Excel can handle as complex a formula as you want to throw at it. You can combine in one cell a formula that adds multiple values, divides values, subtracts values, and multiplies values as well as any number of other mathematical tasks or functions.

      If you’re going to combine calculation steps within one cell, you need to be careful that you properly place your parens so that calculations are performed in the correct order. There is a help document on this titled Calculation operators and precedence in Excel that lists the order in which calculations are done by Excel and also lists a number of operators (such as > for greater than) that are useful to know when working with formulas and functions in Excel.

      If you’re building a really complex formula it’s always a good idea to test it as you go to make sure that all of the components are working properly and that the end result is the expected result. So I will build each component separately before combining them all in one cell.

      Formulas in Excel go beyond the basic mathematical formula you learned in school. They can handle date-based, text-based, and logic-based calculations as well as mathematical calculations. They do this through the use of Excel functions.

      Functions are essentially programmed shortcuts that do specific tasks. For example, the SUM function will add all of the values in a range of cells that you identify. Or the CONCATENATE function will take a set of inputs (usually text) and combine them together in one cell.

      There are hundreds of functions in Excel that you can use in your formulas.

      To use a function, you start a formula with the equals sign, type in the name of the function, use an opening paren, provide the inputs required for that function, and then use a closing paren.

      So to sum a range of cells from A1 through A3, which we’ll cover more when we start working through the fifty functions covered by this book, you would type

      =SUM(A1:A3)

      The equals sign tells Excel this is a formula, the SUM portion tells Excel that we’re using the SUM function, the opening paren says we’re going to list inputs for that function, the A1:A3 tell Excel which cells to apply the function to, and then the closing paren says that’s the end of the function. It doesn’t have to be the end of the formula.

      (As we’ll discuss at the end, you can combine functions within one formula.)

      I could have

      =SUM(A1:A3) + SUM(C1:C3)

      That’s sloppy notation. I could as easily have written =SUM(A1:A3,C1:C3) and had the same result. But the point here is that a formula starts with an equals sign and then you use functions as part of that formula by using their name followed by opening and closing parens and providing the required information for the particular function within the parens.

      Don’t worry. We’re going to walk through lots and lots of examples of this. You’ll get it if you don’t now.

      Just remember to think of a function, whether it handles text or is logical or performs a mathematical function, as part of a formula. In other words, as part of something that is being calculated based upon your inputs.

      Garbage in, garbage out. If you give the function the wrong inputs, you will get the wrong results. So if you get an error message (which we’ll discuss at the end) when using a function, check that the information you input into your formula is formatted properly and is of the right type. That’s usually where things go wrong.

      Alright. Next we’ll talk about where to find functions in Excel. But remember, you need an equals sign (=) to start a formula and then you can use numbers, cell references, operators, or functions to build that formula.

      Where To Find Functions

      In this guide we’re going to cover the fifty Excel functions I thought were most useful for the largest number of people. But there are far, far more functions than that in Excel. And chances are at some point you’ll need one I didn’t cover here.

      In newer versions of Excel, you can go to the Formulas tab to see what Excel functions are available to you. There is a section called Function Library that lists various categories of functions. Mine shows Recently Used, Financial, Logical, Text, Date & Time, Lookup & Reference, Math & Trig, and then there’s a dropdown for More Functions that shows the categories Statistical, Engineering, Cube, Information, Compatibility, and Web.

      Formulas Tab

      Click on the dropdown arrow next to any of the categories and you’ll see a listing of functions that fall under that heading.

      Now, unless you know what you’re looking for, this listing probably won’t help you much because the functions are named things like ACCRINT and IFNA. You can hold your cursor over each of the names and Excel will provide a brief description of the function for you, but for some of the lists that’s a lot of functions to look through.

      Function dropdown description

      Each description also includes a Tell Me More at the end of the description. If you click on that option, the Excel Help screen will appear. You can then click on Excel functions (alphabetical) and choose your desired function from the list. This will show you additional information on the function and how it works.

      Excel Help for AND function

      Instead of that, I would recommend that you use the Insert Function option which is also available in the Formulas tab on the far left-hand side.

      Be sure you’re clicked into an empty cell on your worksheet and then click on Insert Function. This will bring up the Insert Function dialogue box.

      Insert Function dialogue box

      In the top section under where it says Search for a function you can type what you’re looking

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