Office 2013 In Depth

13. Getting the Most from Formulas and Functions

Excel’s real power lies in its ability to do calculations. We enter values into Excel to have those values acted upon by formulas or functions; Excel is all about answers and the answers are provided by the results of the various formulas and functions in a sheet. Whether you are a biologist using statistical functions to enumerate a population study of snowy egrets in the Hudson River valley or a financial maven tracking your investments, Excel provides you with all the tools that you need to do the math.

In this chapter, we look at the basics of building simple formulas and taking advantage of Excel’s huge library of built-in formulas—functions—to do calculations. We explore a number of different ...