Excel formulas and functions for dummies

Excel Formulas & Functions ® 6th Edition by Ken Bluttman Excel® Formulas & Functions For Dummies®, 6th Edition Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com Copyright © 2022 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: WHILE THE PUBLISHER AND AUTHORS HAVE USED THEIR BEST EFFORTS IN PREPARING THIS WORK, THEY 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 ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE NO WARRANTY MAY BE CREATED OR EXTENDED BY SALES REPRESENTATIVES, WRITTEN SALES MATERIALS OR PROMOTIONAL STATEMENTS FOR THIS WORK THE FACT THAT AN ORGANIZATION, WEBSITE, OR PRODUCT IS REFERRED TO IN THIS WORK AS A CITATION AND/OR POTENTIAL SOURCE OF FURTHER 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https://hub.wiley.com/community/support/dummies Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand Some material included with 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: 2021948499 ISBN 978-1-119-83911-8 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-83912-5 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-83913-2 (ebk) Contents at a Glance Introduction Part 1: Getting Started with Excel Formulas and Functions CHAPTER 1: Tapping Into Formula and Function Fundamentals Saving Time with Function Tools 39 CHAPTER 3: Saying “Array!” for Formulas and Functions 55 CHAPTER 4: Fixing Formula Boo-Boos 65 CHAPTER 2: Part 2: Doing the Math 83 CHAPTER 5: Calculating Loan Payments and Interest Rates 85 CHAPTER 6: Appreciating What You’ll Get, Depreciating What You’ve Got 105 CHAPTER 7: Using Basic Math Functions 121 CHAPTER 8: Advancing Your Math 139 Part 3: Solving with Statistics 161 CHAPTER 9: Throwing Statistics a Curve 163 Significance Tests 203 CHAPTER 11: Rolling the Dice on Predictions and Probability 213 CHAPTER 10: Using Part 4: Dancing with Data 231 CHAPTER 12: Dressing Up for Date Functions 233 CHAPTER 13: Keeping Well-Timed Functions 251 CHAPTER 14: Using Lookup, Logical, and Reference Functions Up the Facts CHAPTER 16: Writing Home about Text Functions CHAPTER 17: Playing Records with Database Functions 261 297 311 337 Part 5: The Part of Tens 353 CHAPTER 15: Digging CHAPTER 18: Ten Tips for Working with Formulas 355 CHAPTER 19: Ten Ways to Get Fancy with Excel 369 CHAPTER 20: Ten Really Cool Functions 375 Index 383 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION About This Book Foolish Assumptions Icons Used in This Book Beyond the Book Where to Go from Here 2 3 PART 1: GETTING STARTED WITH EXCEL 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, columns, cells, ranges, and tables 13 Formatting your data 18 Getting help 19 Gaining the Upper Hand on Formulas 20 Entering your first formula 20 Understanding references 22 Copying formulas with the fill handle 25 Assembling formulas the right way 26 Using Functions in Formulas 28 Looking at what goes into a function 30 Arguing with a function 31 Nesting functions 34 CHAPTER 2: Saving Time with Function Tools 39 Getting Familiar with the Insert Function Dialog Box .39 Finding the Correct Function 41 Entering Functions Using the Insert Function Dialog Box 42 Selecting a function that takes no arguments 43 Selecting a function that uses arguments 44 Entering cells, ranges, named areas, and tables as function arguments 47 Getting help in the Insert Function dialog box 50 Using the Function Arguments dialog box to edit functions 50 Directly Entering Formulas and Functions 51 Entering formulas and functions in the Formula Bar 51 Entering formulas and functions directly in worksheet cells 52 Table of Contents v 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 98 Calculating the interest rate 99 Calculating the principal 101 CHAPTER 6: vi Appreciating What You’ll Get, Depreciating What You’ve Got 105 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 106 108 110 111 113 114 116 Excel Formulas & Functions For Dummies CHAPTER 7: Using Basic Math Functions 121 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 121 126 126 128 133 134 135 137 Advancing Your Math 139 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 140 141 141 143 145 147 147 149 150 152 152 154 156 159 159 160 PART 3: SOLVING WITH STATISTICS 161 Throwing Statistics a Curve 163 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 164 169 170 172 174 179 181 185 186 187 189 190 191 CHAPTER 8: CHAPTER 9: Table of Contents vii CHAPTER 10: MIN and MAX LARGE and SMALL Going for the Count COUNT and COUNTA COUNTIF 195 196 198 198 198 Using Significance Tests 203 Testing to the T 204 Comparing Results with an Estimate 208 Rolling the Dice on Predictions and Probability 213 Modeling Linear model Exponential model Getting It Straight: Using SLOPE and INTERCEPT to Describe Linear Data What’s Ahead: Using FORECAST, TREND, and GROWTH to Make Predictions FORECAST TREND GROWTH Using NORM.DIST and POISSON.DIST to Determine Probabilities NORM.DIST POISSON.DIST 214 214 214 225 225 227 PART 4: DANCING WITH DATA 231 Dressing Up for Date Functions 233 Understanding How Excel Handles Dates Formatting Dates Making a Date with DATE Breaking a Date with DAY, MONTH, and YEAR Isolating the day Isolating the month Isolating the year Converting a Date from Text Finding Out What TODAY Is Counting the days until your birthday Counting your age in days Determining the Day of the Week Working with Workdays Determining workdays in a range of dates Workdays in the future Calculating Time Between Two Dates with the DATEDIF Function 233 235 236 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 244 245 246 246 248 249 CHAPTER 11: CHAPTER 12: viii Excel Formulas & Functions For Dummies 215 219 219 221 223 SUMIFS function, 156–158 greatest common divisor, 378 SUMPRODUCT function, 58, 154–156, 169 GROWTH function, 223–224 TAN function, 159–160 trigonometry, 159–160 TRUNC function, 134–135 functions, text about, 311 CONCATENATE function, 316–318 DOLLAR function, 318–320 EXACT function, 331–332 FIND function, 332–333 LEFT function, 311–313, 316, 330 LEN function, 315–316, 330 LOWER function, 329–330 MID function, 311, 314–315, 316 PROPER function, 329–330 REPLACE function, 324–326 H Harvey, Greg (author) Excel All-in-One For Dummies, headers, 339 Help, 19, 50 hexadecimal numbers, 376–377 histogram, 195 HLOOKUP function, 284–287 Hot Items, 266 HOUR function, 255–257 I icons, explained, REPT function, 323 IF function, 262–267 RIGHT function, 311, 313–314, 316, 330 IfError feature, 81 SEARCH function, 333–336 ignoring signs, 137–138 SUBSTITUTE function, 324, 326–327 INDEX function, 289–293 TEXT function, 320–322 INDIRECT function, 279 TRIM function, 328–329 inferential statistics UPPER function, 329–330 functions, time about, 251–252 calculating elapsed time over days, 259–260 about, 203–204 Chi Square test, 208–212 defined, 164 TTEST function, 204–208 formatting time, 252–253 INFO function, 302–303 HOUR function, 255–257 information functions MINUTE function, 255, 257 about, 297 NOW function, 30–31, 258 CELL function, 297–302 SECOND function, 255, 258 INFO function, 302–303 TIME function, 254 IS function, 304–307 TIMEVALUE function, 254–255 ISBLANK function, 306–307 FUTURE VALUE (FV) function, 93, 105, 106–108 G GCD function, 378 Goal Seek feature, 370–371 greater than (>), 344 greater than or equal to (>=), 344 ISERR function, 304–306 ISERROR function, 304–306 ISNA function, 304–306 ISNONTEXT function, 306–307 ISNUMBER function, 306–307 ISTEXT function, 306–307 TYPE function, 308–309 Index 391 Insert Function dialog box less than or equal to (