Excel formulas functions for dummies

Excel Formulas & Functions ® Excel Formulas & Functions ® 5th Edition by Ken Bluttman Excel® Formulas & Functions For Dummies®, 5th Edition Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com Copyright © 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the Publisher Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions Trademarks: Wiley, For Dummies, the Dummies Man logo, Dummies.com, Making Everything Easier, and related trade dress are trademarks or registered trademarks of John Wiley & Sons, Inc and may not be used without written permission Microsoft and Excel are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners John Wiley & Sons, Inc is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book LIMIT OF LIABILITY/DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY: THE PUBLISHER AND THE AUTHOR MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES WITH RESPECT TO THE ACCURACY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENTS OF THIS WORK AND SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, INCLUDING WITHOUT LIMITATION WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES OR PROMOTIONAL MATERIALS. THE ADVICE AND STRATEGIES CONTAINED HEREIN MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR EVERY SITUATION. THIS WORK IS SOLD WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT THE PUBLISHER IS NOT ENGAGED IN RENDERING LEGAL, ACCOUNTING, OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES. IF PROFESSIONAL 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standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com Library of Congress Control Number: 2018957336 ISBN 978-1-119-51825-9 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-51827-3 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-51826-6 (ebk) Manufactured in the United States of America 10 Contents at a Glance Introduction Part 1: Getting Started with Formulas and Functions CHAPTER 1: Tapping Into Formula and Function Fundamentals CHAPTER 2: Saving Time with Function Tools 37 CHAPTER 3: Saying “Array!” for Formulas and Functions 55 CHAPTER 4: Fixing Formula Boo-Boos 65 Part 2: Doing the Math 83 CHAPTER 5: Calculating Loan Payments and Interest Rates 85 Appreciating What You’ll Get, Depreciating What You’ve Got 103 CHAPTER 7: Using Basic Math Functions 119 CHAPTER 8: Advancing Your Math 137 CHAPTER 6: Part 3: Solving with Statistics 159 CHAPTER 9: Throwing Statistics a Curve 161 CHAPTER 10: Using Significance Tests 199 CHAPTER 11: Rolling the Dice on Predictions and Probability 209 Part 4: Dancing with Data 227 CHAPTER 12: Dressing Up for Date Functions 229 Well-Timed Functions 247 CHAPTER 14: Using Lookup, Logical, and Reference Functions 257 CHAPTER 13: Keeping CHAPTER 15: Digging Up the Facts 289 Home About Text Functions 303 CHAPTER 17: Playing Records with Database Functions 327 CHAPTER 16: Writing Part 5: The Part of Tens 343 CHAPTER 18: Ten Tips for Working with Formulas 345 Functions You Really Should Know 359 CHAPTER 20: Ten Really Cool Functions 367 CHAPTER 19: Ten Index 375 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION About This Book Foolish Assumptions How to Use This Book Icons Used in This Book Where to Go from Here 2 PART 1: GETTING STARTED WITH FORMULAS AND FUNCTIONS CHAPTER 1: Tapping Into Formula and Function Fundamentals Working with Excel Fundamentals Understanding workbooks and worksheets Introducing the Formulas Tab 11 Working with rows, column, cells, ranges, and tables 13 Formatting your data 17 Getting help 19 Gaining the Upper Hand on Formulas 19 Entering your first formula 20 Understanding references 22 Copying formulas with the fill handle 24 Assembling formulas the right way 25 Using Functions in Formulas 27 Looking at what goes into a function 29 Arguing with a function 30 Nesting functions 32 CHAPTER 2: Saving Time with Function Tools 37 Getting Familiar with the Insert Function Dialog Box .37 Finding the Correct Function 39 Entering Functions Using the Insert Function Dialog Box 40 Selecting a function that takes no arguments 41 Selecting a function that uses arguments 42 Entering cells, ranges, named areas, and tables as function arguments 43 Getting help in the Insert Function dialog box 48 Using the Function Arguments dialog box to edit functions 49 Directly Entering Formulas and Functions 49 Entering formulas and functions in the Formula Bar 49 Entering formulas and functions directly in worksheet cells 51 Table of Contents vii CHAPTER 3: Saying “Array!” for Formulas and Functions 55 Discovering Arrays 56 Using Arrays in Formulas 57 Working with Functions That Return Arrays 61 CHAPTER 4: Fixing Formula Boo-Boos 65 Catching Errors As You Enter Them Getting parentheses to match Avoiding circular references Mending broken links Using the Formula Error Checker Auditing Formulas Watching the Watch Window Evaluating and Checking Errors Making an Error Behave the Way You Want 65 66 68 70 72 75 78 79 81 PART 2: DOING THE MATH 83 CHAPTER 5: Calculating Loan Payments and Interest Rates 85 Understanding How Excel Handles Money 86 Going with the cash flow 86 Formatting for currency 86 Choosing separators 88 Figuring Loan Calculations 90 Calculating the payment amount 91 Calculating interest payments 93 Calculating payments toward principal 94 Calculating the number of payments 96 Calculating the number of payments with PDURATION 97 Calculating the interest rate 98 Calculating the principal 101 CHAPTER 6: viii Appreciating What You’ll Get, Depreciating What You’ve Got 103 Looking into the Future Depreciating the Finer Things in Life Calculating straight-line depreciation Creating an accelerated depreciation schedule Creating an even faster accelerated depreciation schedule Calculating a midyear depreciation schedule Measuring Your Internals 104 106 108 109 111 112 114 Excel Formulas & Functions For Dummies CHAPTER 7: Using Basic Math Functions 119 Adding It All Together with the SUM Function Rounding Out Your Knowledge Just plain old rounding Rounding in one direction Leaving All Decimals Behind with INT Leaving Some Decimals Behind with TRUNC Looking for a Sign Ignoring Signs 119 124 124 126 131 132 133 135 Advancing Your Math 137 Using PI to Calculate Circumference and Diameter Generating and Using Random Numbers The all-purpose RAND function Precise randomness with RANDBETWEEN Ordering Items Combining Raising Numbers to New Heights Multiplying Multiple Numbers Using What Remains with the MOD Function Summing Things Up Using SUBTOTAL Using SUMPRODUCT Using SUMIF and SUMIFS Getting an Angle on Trigonometry Three basic trigonometry functions Degrees and radians 138 139 139 141 143 144 145 146 148 149 149 151 153 156 156 157 PART 3: SOLVING WITH STATISTICS 159 Throwing Statistics a Curve 161 Getting Stuck in the Middle with AVERAGE, MEDIAN, and MODE Deviating from the Middle Measuring variance Analyzing deviations Looking for normal distribution Skewing from the norm Comparing data sets Analyzing Data with Percentiles and Bins QUARTILE.INC and QUARTILE.EXC PERCENTILE.INC and PERCENTILE.EXC RANK PERCENTRANK FREQUENCY 162 167 167 170 172 177 179 183 183 185 186 188 189 CHAPTER 8: CHAPTER 9: Table of Contents ix Determine Part of a Year with YEARFRAC If you need to know what percentage of a year a range of dates is, Excel has the perfect function for you! YEARFRAC returns a percentage of a year You feed the function a start and end date, and an optional basis for how to count dates (such as a 360-day year, a 365-day year, and so on) The number given back from the function is a percentage — a number less than 1, assuming that the range of dates is less than a full year An exact one-year range returns 1, and a range longer than a year returns a number larger than Find the Data TYPE The content in a cell may be text, a number, a logical value, an error, or an array The TYPE function tells you which type the content is When you’re looking at a cell, it’s obvious what the type is However, if your formulas are using cell references, you may wish to put the TYPE function into the formula before attempting a mathematical operation This ensures that you can have a valid result returned instead of an error For example, A4 has 25 and A5 has “Apple.” An attempt to add these results in an error Instead put the TYPE function into the formula to determine if the calculation should take place The formula would look like this: =IF(TYPE(A4)=1&TYPE(A5)=1,A4+A5,"Unable to calculate") The result in this case is Unable to calculate because you cannot add a number with text The TYPE function returns five possible values: »» 1=number »» 2=text »» 4=a logical value (And, Or, and so on) »» 16=an error »» 64=an array 372 PART The Part of Tens Find the LENgth of Your Text Finding the length of a text string can be very useful in cases where you have many pieces of similar text For example, if you have a long list of factory part codes, you can test if any are invalid by testing the length Let’s say the valid format for a factory code is five characters Running the LEN function in a column next to the factory codes can reveal those that have a length that is not five characters and are therefore invalid The LEN function is simple; it just takes one argument — the cell or actual text being referenced For example, here is the LEN function referencing cell F15: =LEN(F15) Just in CASE Three helpful functions make formatting your text a breeze These CASE functions take a text string and return as all lowercase, all uppercase, or in proper case (each word starts with an uppercase letter) This is useful when formatting titles and headings Assuming this string of text is in cell A5 — “Hello, how are you?”: LOWER(A5) returns hello, how are you? UPPER(A5) returns HELLO, HOW ARE YOU? PROPER(A5) returns Hello, How Are You? CHAPTER 20 Ten Really Cool Functions 373 Index Symbols * (asterisk), 196 {} (braces), 56–57 $ (dollar sign), 349 ("") (empty string), 319 = (equal sign), 19 > (greater than), 334 >= (greater than or equal to), 334 < (less than), 334 ), 334 TRUNC function, 132–133 greater than or equal to (>=), 334 functions, text about, 303 CONCATENATE function, 308–309 DOLLAR function, 310–311 EXACT function, 321–323 FIND function, 323–324 greatest common divisor, 370 ISERROR function, 296–297 ISNA function, 296–297 ISNONTEXT function, 297–299 ISNUMBER function, 297–299 ISTEXT function, 297–299 TYPE function, 299–301 Insert Function dialog box about, 37–39 GROWTH function, 219–220 arguing with functions, 29–32 H entering functions using, 40–49 Harvey, Greg (author) Excel 2019 For Dummies, creating functions, 355–357 function categories, 40 help in, 48 LEFT function, 303–305, 307, 321 headers, 329 inserting worksheets, 10 Help, 19, 48 LEN function, 307–308, 321 hexadecimal numbers, 368–369 INT function, 131–132, 140–141, 361 LOWER function, 320–321 histogram, 191 MID function, 303, 306–307 HLOOKUP function, 278–281, 363 PROPER function, 320–321 REPLACE function, 315–317 REPT function, 314–315 RIGHT function, 303, 305, 307, 321 Hot Items, 261–262 HOUR function, 251–252 I SUBSTITUTE function, 315, 317–319 IF function, 258–263, 362 TRIM function, 319–320 UPPER function, 320–321 functions, time interest payments, calculating, 93–94 interest rates, 85–86, 90 See also loans and interest rates, calculating INTERNAL RATE OF RETURN (IRR) function, 103, 114–118 SEARCH function, 324–326 TEXT function, 311–314 INTERCEPT function, 211–215 icons, explained, 2–3 IfError feature, 81 internals, measuring, 114–118 inverse correlation, 182 IPMT function, 29, 93–94 INDEX function, 281–285 IRR (INTERNAL RATE OF RETURN) function, 103, 114–118 inferential statistics irrational number, 138 ignoring signs, 135–136 about, 247–248 about, 199–200 IS function, 295–299 calculating elapsed time over days, 255 Chi Square test, 204–207 ISBLANK function, 297–299 TTEST function, 200–204 ISERR function, 296–297 formatting time, 248–249 INFO function, 294–295 ISERROR function, 296–297 HOUR function, 251–252 information functions ISNA function, 296–297 MINUTE function, 251, 253 about, 289 ISNONTEXT function, 297–299 NOW function, 29, 254, 363 CELL function, 289–294 SECOND function, 251, 253–254 INFO function, 294–295 ISNUMBER function, 297–299, 364 IS function, 295–299 ISTEXT function, 297–299 Index 379 K OFFSET function, 276–278 TAN function, 156–157 trigonometry, 156–157 kurtosis, 178–179 OR function, 267–269, 333–334 ROW function, 274–276 KURT function, 178–179 ROWS function, 274–276 L LARGE function, 193–194 LCM function, 370 least common multiple, 370 LEFT function, 303–305, 307, 321 LEN function, 307–308, 321, 373 less than (