Introduction

There's no arguing that formulas are the true engines of Excel. Employing various Excel functions, formulas enable Excel analysts to create aggregated reporting, complex calculation engines, clever dashboard models, and much more. Indeed, Excel analysts become more productive as their proficiency with Excel functions and formulas improves.

But building proficiency with Excel functions and formulas takes time. Given that Excel contains more than 400 functions, you could spend months, even years, learning which functions are best for certain tasks and which functions can be combined with others functions.

This is where this book comes in. Here, we will introduce you to the world of Excel formulas by guiding you through the various built-in functions Excel has to offer. Each chapter builds on the last, taking you from basic math functions to actually building your own custom functions.

As you'll discover, leveraging Excel functions will not only make you more productive, but it will allow you to accomplish tasks that you didn't know could be handled with Excel formulas.

What You Need to Know

This is not a book for beginning Excel users. If you have absolutely no experience with Excel, this is probably not the best book for you unless you're one of a rare breed who can learn a new software product almost instantaneously.

To get the most out of this book, you should have some background using Excel. Specifically, we assume that you know how to

• Create workbooks, insert sheets, save files, and complete other basic tasks.
• Navigate a workbook.
• Use the Excel Ribbon and dialog boxes.
• Use basic Windows features, such as file management and copy-and-paste techniques.

What You Need to Have

This book was written with Excel 2016 as a base, but most of the material also applies to Excel 2007-2013. If you're using a version prior to Excel 2016, you may find that a handful of functions (such as the new Forecasting functions introduced in Excel 2016) will not be available to you. Any function not available in all four versions of Excel will be called out in each chapter.

If you are using a version of Excel prior to 2007, we highly recommend you pick up a previous edition of this book. The changes introduced in Excel 2007 are so extensive that you might be hopelessly confused if you try to follow along using an earlier version of Excel.

To download the examples for this book, you need to access the Internet. The examples are discussed further in the "About This Book's Website" section, later in this Introduction.

Note

Note that the examples for this book were created on the Windows platform. For you MAC users, we can't guarantee that all examples will work with Excel for Mac. Excel's cross-platform compatibility is pretty good, but it's definitely not perfect.

As far as hardware goes, the faster the better. And, of course, the more memory in your system, the happier you'll be.

Conventions in This Book

Take a minute to skim this section and learn some of the typographic conventions used throughout this book.

Keyboard conventions

You use the keyboard to enter formulas. In addition, you can work with menus and dialog boxes directly from the keyboard-a method you may find easier if your hands are already positioned over the keys.

Formula listings

Formulas usually appear on a separate line in monospace font. For example, we may list the following formula:

Excel supports a special type of formula known as an array formula. When you enter an array formula, press Ctrl+Shift+Enter (not just Enter). Excel encloses an array formula in brackets in order to remind you that it's an array formula. When we list an array formula, we include the brackets to make it clear that it is, in fact, an array formula. For example:

Note

Do not type the brackets for an array formula. Excel will put them in automatically.

VBA code listings

This book also contains examples of VBA code. Each listing appears in a monospace font; each line of code occupies a separate line. To make the code easier to read, we usually use one or more tabs to create indentations. Indentation is optional, but it does help to delineate statements that go together.

If a line of code doesn't fit on a single line in this book, we use the standard VBA line continuation sequence: a space followed by an underscore character. This indicates that the line of code extends to the next line. For example, the following two lines comprise a single VBA statement:

You can enter this code either exactly as shown on two lines or on a single line without the trailing underscore character.

Key names

Names of keys on the keyboard appear in normal type: for example, Alt, Home, PgDn, and Ctrl. When you should press two keys simultaneously, the keys are connected with a plus sign: "Press Ctrl+G to display the Go To dialog box."

Functions, procedures, and named ranges

Excel's worksheet functions appear in all uppercase, like so: "Use the SUM function to add the values in column A."

Macro and procedure names appear in normal type: "Execute the InsertTotals procedure." We often use mixed upper- and lowercase to make these names easier to read. Named ranges appear in italic: "Select the InputArea range."

Unless you're dealing with text inside of quotation marks, Excel is not sensitive to case. In other words, both of the following formulas produce the same result:

Excel, however, will convert the characters in the second formula to uppercase.

Mouse conventions

The mouse terminology in this book is all standard fare: pointing, clicking, right-clicking, dragging, and so on. You know the drill.

What the icons mean

Throughout the book, icons appear to call your attention to points that are particularly important.

Note

We use Note icons to tell you that something is important-perhaps a concept that may help you master the task at hand or something fundamental for understanding subsequent material.

Tip

Tip icons indicate a more efficient way of doing something or a technique that may not be obvious. These will often impress your officemates.

On the Web

These icons indicate that an example file is on this book's website. (See the upcoming "About This Book's Website" section.)

Warning

We use Warning icons when the operation that we are describing can cause problems if you're not careful.

Cross-Ref

We use the Cross Reference icon to refer you to other chapters that have more to say on a particular topic.

How This Book Is Organized

This book is divided into seven parts with each part focusing on a key aspect of Excel functions.

Part I: Understanding Formula Basics

This part is introductory in nature; it consists of Chapters 1-3. Chapter 1 sets the stage with a quick and dirty overview of Excel. This chapter is designed for readers who are new to Excel but have used other spreadsheet products. In Chapter 2, we cover the basics of formulas. This chapter is absolutely essential reading to get the most out of this book. Chapter 3 deals with names. If you thought names were just for cells and ranges, you'll see that you're missing out on quite a bit.

Part II: Leveraging Excel Functions

This part consists of Chapters 4-10. Chapter 4 covers the basics of using worksheet functions in your formulas. We get more specific in subsequent chapters. Chapter 5 deals with manipulating text, Chapter 6 covers dates and times, and Chapter 7 explores counting techniques. In Chapter 8, we discuss various types of lookup formulas. Chapter 9 deals with tables and worksheet databases; and Chapter 10 covers a variety of miscellaneous calculations, such as unit conversions and rounding.

Part III: Financial Formulas

Part III consists of three chapters (Chapters 11-13) that deal with creating financial formulas. You'll find lots of useful formulas that you can adapt to your needs.

Part IV: Array Formulas

This part consists of Chapters 14 and 15. The majority of Excel users know little or nothing about array formulas-a topic that happens to be dear to us. Therefore, we devote an entire part to this little-used yet extremely powerful feature.

Part V: Miscellaneous Formula Techniques

This part consists of Chapters 16-22. They cover a variety of topics-some of which, on the surface, may appear to have nothing to do with formulas. Chapter 16 provides lots of useful information about cleaning up data. In Chapter 17, you'll see why formulas can be important when you work with charts, and Chapter 18 covers formulas as they relate to pivot tables. Chapter 19 contains some very interesting (and useful) formulas that you can use in conjunction with Excel's conditional formatting feature. Chapter 20 covers the data validation...