Top 10 Most Useful Excel Formulas
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JongMadeloTop 10 Most Useful Excel Formulas
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Interesting Engineering
Interesting Engineering has been bringing you some of the most helpful
excel tips around, and now it's time to present the most useful formulas
in the spreadsheet software. Excel is a valuable tool as it can do a lot of
math automatically without the need for you to do any work. You're
probably aware of some of the basic formulas like SUM and AVERAGE,
but check out our list of the most helpful.
SUM allows you to sum any number of columns or rows by selecting
them or typing them in, for example, =SUM(A1:A8) would sum all
values in between A1 and A8 and so on. COUNT counts the number of
cells in an array that have a number value in them. This would be useful
for maybe determining if someone has paid, or in other database
situations. AVERAGE does exactly what it sounds like and take the
average of the numbers you input.
IF statements are super useful in a lot of situations, and this function
allows you to output text if a case is valid, or false. For example, you
could write =IF(A1>A2, "GOOD", "BAD"), where A1>A2 is the case,
"GOOD" is the output if true and "BAD is the output if false.
These functions are a combination of the SUM, COUNT, AVERAGE
functions with the attachment to IF statements. All of these functions
are structured the same way, being =FUNCTION(range, criteria,
function range). So in SUM, you could input =SUM(A1:A15, "GOOD",
B1:B13). This would add B1 through B13 if the values of A1 through A15
all said GOOD. You may be starting to see how many of these formulas
can be applied on top of each other to create some complex
spreadsheets.
This function allows you to search for something in leftmost column of
a spreadsheet and return it as a value. An example of how to use this
would be as follows: =VLOOKUP(lookup value, the table being
searched, index number, sorting identifier). The downside to this
function is it requires the information being searched to be in the
leftmost column, but don't worry, we have a solution further down in
this list! This function is a little more complicated than this article will
allow for, so you can read an in-depth explanation of how it works here.
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Top 10 Most Useful Excel Formulas https://interestingengineering.com/top-10-most-useful-excel-formulas
Concatenate is not only a fantastic word to say, but it is also a useful
function if you need to combine data into one cell. Say for example you
had a first and last name, in cells A1 and A2 respectively. You would
type =CONCATENATE(A1," ",B2), which would combine the names
into one cell, with the " " adding a space in between.
These functions are very simple, just type in the column or row of
numbers you want to search following the function and it will output
the MAX or MIN depending on the function you use. For example,
=MAX(A1:A10) would output the maximum numerical value in those
rows.
This is another logical function in Excel, and it will check if certain
things are true or false. For example, =AND(A1="GOOD", B2>10)
would output TRUE if A1 is GOOD and the value of B2 is greater than
10. You can have it check more values than two as well, simply add it on
with another comma.
PROPER is useful when your database has a lot of oddly formatted text
that looks jumbled with capitalizations in the wrong place. If cell A1
said "intErestIng EnginEEring is greaT", you could type =PROPER(A1)
and it would output "Interesting Engineering is Great".
This isn't technically a formula, but it is an incredibly useful tool that is
built right into Excel. If you go Home –> Styles –> Conditional
formatting, you can select many options that will give outputs if certain
things are true. You can do a lot of this with the formulas mentioned
before, but why not let Excel do the hard work.
This combination of functions allows you to work around VLOOKUP's
annoying limitations. By combining these functions like this,
=INDEX(list of values, MATCH(what you want to lookup, lookup
column, sorting identifier)), you can search a whole spreadsheet for
values instead of being forced to only search the left-most column.
What are some of your favorite, most useful Excel Formulas? Help
everyone out by letting us know in the comments.
Written by Trevor English
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