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calculation.
E.g. The function SUM(A1:A10) tells Excel to sum up all the values in cells A1, down
to A10 and put the result in the cell where you typed it.
Both formulas and functions must be preceded by the equals sign for Excel to
understand them.
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A function is a piece of code designed to calculate specific values and are used
inside formulas. Functions to sum values, calculate a trigonometric cosine, and to
calculate the current time are built into excel. Additional functions can be defined
using Visual Basic.
Functions are typed alongside parenthesizes, where in the arguments if any are
listed in between. To use functions in a formula, for example
A function is something provided by Excel, such as IF, COUNT, SUM, AVERAGE and
so on, which will carry out an operation of some kind and provide an output value.
In most cases functions will take criteria, but not always (such as the RAND()
function, for example.
A formula also provides an output, but the main difference is that a formula is
something that is user-created, and can use within it many (or no) other Excel
functions to produce an output.
=A2+B2
=IF(A2=5,"YES","NO")
=sum(A2:A6)/10
All of these are formulas. As you can see, they can contain other functions and
operators (such as plus, minus, etc) to provide their output.
And that's it - It's really that simple. I hope this helps you to understand the
difference between the two.
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26 May, 2009
Ever been guilty of using Excel as a fancy calculator? If so, you’d be just using a
formula in Excel - such as =A1+A2 or =452*12.
There are, however, pre-defined formulas in Excel such as IF, SUM, VLOOKUP, INDEX
(and about 300 more!) These are referred to as functions.
So, you could write a formula containing a function eg. =MAX(A1:B20) or you could
just write a simple formula which does not contain a function eg. =A1/A2.