August 2010
Intermediate to advanced
320 pages
6h 57m
English
Content preview from Using Microsoft® Excel® 2010
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
Start your free trial
5. Using Formulas
This chapter will teach you about entering and troubleshooting formulas.
Excel is great for simple data entry, but its real strength is its capability to perform calculations. After you design a sheet to perform calculations, you can easily change the data and watch Excel instantly recalculate. This chapter introduces you to formula basics that you can later apply to Chapter 6, “Using Functions.”
The Importance of Laying Data Out Properly
Except for when using certain functions, such as VLOOKUP, Excel doesn’t really care how you lay out your data. For example, you can lay out your data as shown in Figure 5.1, with dates across the top. But if you later decide you want to use a pivot table or certain functions, your options ...