Office 2013 In Depth

Working with Excel Functions

Formulas provide you with a way to do simple arithmetic and some logical expressions, but most of the heavy lifting you do in terms of calculations in Excel is accomplished using functions. Functions can do everything from adding a range of numbers, to counting the number of entries in a range, to providing you with the return on an investment when you have a constant interest rate and consistent monthly deposits. And you can bank on the fact that my previous statement doesn’t even scratch the surface of possibilities in terms of the different kinds of functions that Excel provides.

Functions consist of two parts: the function name and the cell addresses that are to be acted on. These cell ranges or individual cell ...