More of the Same in Excel 2010 Part 1

And what about all those other functions? Excel has hundreds of them; and while you’ll be pleased to learn that we don’t have  room to expound them all, it may be time to recall that bit of unasked-for advice I issued to you about 30 pages ago: namely that  it really pays to learn about as many functions as you can.

When I first encountered spreadsheets—in the Paleolithic late 80s, pioneer days when Lotus 1-2-3 ruled the roost and the Undo  button was merely a gleam in Bill Gates’ eye—my then-boss handed me a rather copious 1-2-3 manual, and wrapped it with one  laconic instruction: Learn it. And when I came upon the chapter describing functions—and many of the ones we still use date  back to that time—I was incredulous that anyone could actually find a place for these arcane concoctions. But as I learned more about spreadsheets I came to see the wisdom—and the potential value—of a good many of them. In fact,  we already know five  functions; let’s learn some more. Not all of them, mind you, but some important ones—after we learn a few preliminaries.

First, you’ll want to know that all the Excel functions are neatly catalogued and warehoused inside the buttons shelved in the  Function Library group in the Formulas tab (Figure 3 – 28):

Click one of the buttons, and a directory of functions belonging to the category you clicked drops down, as in Figure 3–28:

Click one of the entries, and you’ll be brought to a dialog box whose contents vary by function, but it looks more or less like  this (Figure 3–30):

Figure 3 – 30. Friendly arguments: a function-writing dialog box These dialog boxes afford the users a fill-in-the-blanks motif,  requesting them to enter essential bits of information, technically called arguments (note the name of the dialog box in Figure  3–28), which when entered enable Excel to calculate the answer you’re looking for. Let’s look at one such dialog box of a function you already know: see Figure 3–28 for the dialog box for the COUNT function.

What sort of blanks are we asked to fill in here? In this case, ranges. I can type a range in the Value 1 field, or even drag that  range on the worksheet itself. Either way the range is recorded in Value 1. If I need to introduce a second range to COUNT, I  can identify it in Value 2. And if I need even a third or more ranges, a Value 3, etc., field appears. When I click OK, the COUNT  function and result is instated in whichever cell I had clicked before I called up the dialog box.

Remember, though, that the kinds of blanks you’ll see in the dialog box will depend on the function you’ve selected, and you  will need to have a pretty good idea what’s going on before you can proceed. So if you remain daunted at this point, you can  click the Help on this function link in the box’s lower left corner; you’ll be whisked to a discussion of the function in Excel’s  Help facility, which is usually pretty clear.