Dealing With Formulas In Excel

Excel is a wonderful spreadsheet program if you have a few skills that help you to use it properly. One thing that many people still have problems with is how one can use formulas to help them with their calculations.

Let’s walk through one process. Let’s say you want to add up 10 numbers to get the total. In boxes A1 – A10, type any 3-digit numbers you can think of. In box 11, you can do one of two things. You can either click the box at the top that looks like a capital E, which actually means “sum”, and it will highlight all the boxes above, and as soon as you hit Enter it will give you the total. Or you can type in the formula, which will read the same, which would be =sum(A1:A10).

Now, the formula is important because not only did it tell your spreadsheet to add all those numbers up, but now we can use that box for our next project. Go over to box B11. Hit the + sign, click in box A11, hit the / key, then type the number 10 and hit enter. What you’ve just done is created a formula to tell you what the average is for those 10 numbers. You don’t have to add up each individual number again because your first formula did it for you.

Next, type in four 3-digit numbers under B11. Once you’re done, you can either hit that Sum button at the top or type in the formula =sum(b11:B15). That will give you a total of your four new numbers plus your other number, even though your previous number was a formula also. You can continue doing that and hitting the plus key, the minus key, the asterisk key, and the slash key for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, as well as you remember to follow your formulas each time.

Two things you need to know moving forward. Say one of those numbers was incorrect and you needed to change it. Just go into the box and change the number, and the formula will automatically correct itself. Just don’t type a number in where your formula is, because you’ll erase it. If you accidentally type something where your formula was, you don’t have to type in the formula again; just hold down on the Ctrl key and hit the letter Z, and it will revert back to what it was.

The second thing is that any time you want to copy something from a previous box, you always have to hit the + sign first. No matter where you want to copy that first piece, it’s always the + sign first. So, if you’re at F18 and want to copy the number from B16, you would hit the + sign, take your mouse over and click on F18, then type whatever you want to do after wards. If you just want to copy F18 without anything else, hit enter after you’ve clicked on that box.

This is just a quick down and dirty on how one can use formulas. There are many other uses and ways of using formulas for more complicated things; we’ll pick up here another time.

By: Paul Escobedo

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Search microsoft office training , computer training courses and computer classroom rentals today!