Anatomy of a Formula

There are tons of sites explaining how to use a formula. Even Microsoft has them, even though Excel has excellent Help documentation. So why am I adding a drop to the ocean of information? Well, because I want to; because I'd feel amiss that I left a gap in my communication to you.

If you're a complete babe to Excel you don't even know that =A1+A2 is the formula to add the contents of A1 and A2. For the rest of the world, we've known that and this is no news to 99% of the population on the web. But the population drops to about 80 with

=SUM(A1:A5)

Still, the majority of us knows and understands this function. It's easy to infer that it is adding the contents of cells A1 through A5. It's easier than to write A1+A2+A3+A4+A5. What if you want to add a hundred rows? A1:A100 is way much faster.

Well, formulas consist of a Keyword and their arguments enclosed in parenthesis. Again, most know this. In our example above SUM is the keyword and A1:A5 is its argument. The keyword is what to do and the argument specifies with what. It's like saying BuildTable(Wood) or BuildTable(Concrete) or BuildTable(Concrete&Wood) or BuildTable(Metal).

We've established that Excel offers hundreds of native formulas called Functions and it also offers great documentation on how to use them, in case you don't know how. It does this by way of a Function Wizard. You can find the wizard under the Formula tab. Let's take a look, shall we?

By clicking the Fx button, a window launches with a list of the functions available. Here I've selected ABS function. If I forgot how to use it, below it reminds me what it does and its argument. In this case, it just needs 1 value. If you've used the function and can't remember exactly how you used it, this is a great little reminder. If however, you've never used a function, then for that... for that my friend Microsoft went all out.

In more obscure functions with lots of arguments, Excel offers the final and best assist ever. See the Help on this function link at the bottom? Clicking it opens a new window and goes on to describe it, provide examples.In some instances, it even gives you sample data to copy and paste into your own file to test and play around with.

You don't always use the wizard, oh when you do, it usually saves your hide. Be a friend to your Function Wizard, visit him sometimes. He gets lonely in there sometimes.